"Won't your Anerley friends help you?"
"What help could I take from them? Besides, they are worse off than myself, and that pretty girl of theirs, about whom I have so often spoken to you, is very poorly, and wants to be taken out of London. I should rather like to help them than think of their helping me."
"Won't you come back to the stage, then?"
"Not until I'm starving."
The rehearsals for the new burlesque began, and a farce was put on in which Nelly played; so that, for several days, she was so busy from morning till night that she never had time to run up to see her friend in these poor Howland-street lodgings. So Annie Brunel was left alone. The Anerleys had not her address. The Hubbards she was only too anxious to avoid. Mrs. Christmas, her old companion, was gone; and around her were thousands of her fellow-creatures all struggling to get that bit of bread and that glass of water which were necessary to her existence.
The landlady and her husband treated her with great respect, because, when asked for a month's rent in advance, she at once gave them the two sovereigns demanded. There remained to her, in available money, about twenty-four shillings, which is not a great sum wherewith to support a person looking out for a situation in London.
In about a week's time Nelly Featherstone called. After the usual osculation and "my dearing," Nelly assumed a serious air, and said that it wouldn't do.
"You're looking remarkably ill, and you'll be worse if you sit moping here, and doing nothing. You must be a descendant of Don Quixote. Why not come down to the theatre, see Mr. Melton, and get an engagement?"
"I can't do it, Nelly.
"You mean you won't. Then, at all events, you'll spend to-day as a holiday. The rehearsals are all over. I shall send for Frank, and he will take us into the country."