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As Mavis thus waited, disconsolate and alone, her heart sank within her. Her present case seemed to foreshadow the treatment she would receive at Mrs Gowler's hands during her confinement, which might now occur at any moment.
She did not want her baby to be in any way affected by the acute mental discomfort occasioned to its mother by the presence of Mrs Gowler's son, a contingency she had understood could easily be a reality. When she looked about for her hat and umbrella, she discovered, to her great relief, that she was alone, Oscar having apparently slipped out after his mother, the kitchen door being ajar.
Whether it was owing to all she had lately endured, or because her maternal instinct urged her to think only of her as yet unborn little one, she became aware of a hardening of heart which convinced her of the expediency of fighting for her own hand in the future. Mrs Gowler's absence was the immediate cause of this manifestation.
Much of the work was debasing and menial; its performance left her weak and irritable; she believed that it was gradually breaking the little spirit she had brought from Mrs Gowler's nursing home.
Mavis, who had always looked on the birth of a child as something sacred and demanding the utmost privacy, was inexpressibly shocked at the wholesale fashion in which children were brought into the world at Mrs Gowler's.
"You will, will yer! You try it on," cried Mrs Gowler defiantly. "I believe he could be prosecuted, if I told the police about it," remarked Mavis. At the mention of "police," Mrs Gowler's face became rigid.
The wan fingers grasped tighter and tighter; the smile faded a little before becoming fixed. Another moment, and "Poulter's" had lost the most devoted servant which it had ever possessed. Mavis and Jill stood outside Mrs Gowler's, in the late evening of the Wednesday after the day on which Miss Nippett had commenced her long, long rest.
His love decorated the one-time sparrow that she was with feathers of gorgeous hue. Days succeeded each other within the four walls of Mrs Gowler's nursing home much as anywhere else, although in each twenty-four hours there usually occurred what were to Mavis's sensitive eyes and ears unedifying sights, agonised cries of women in torment.
These were the "Permanent" and the "Lil" of Halverton Street days. One day, clad in shabby garments, she went to Mrs Gowler's address at New Cross to get news of the former. But the house of evil remembrance was to let; a woman at the next door house told Mavis that Mrs Gowler had been arrested and had got ten years for the misdeeds which the police had at last been able to prove.
"Your lovin' 'usband wot's in Ameriky a-making a snug little 'ome for you." Mavis was, for the moment, vanquished by the adroitness of Mrs Gowler's thrust. "I'm not well enough to quarrel. Please to show me my room." "That's better.
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