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Mrs Taylor spoke in a low, sweet voice; she would like to accommodate Mavis, but she had to be very, very particular: one had to be so careful nowadays. Could Mavis furnish references; failing that, would Mavis tell her what place of worship she attended? Mavis referred Mrs Taylor to Miss Toombs at Melkbridge and Mrs Scatchard at North Kensington, which satisfied the landlady.
"Yes, yes," thought Mavis, "it is it is good to be alive." Days passed swiftly for Mavis; weeks glided into months, months into seasons. When the anniversary of the day on which she had commenced work at the boot factory came round, she could not believe that she had been at Melkbridge a year.
"I only wanted to know why I mustn't dream of going back to Melkbridge," said Mavis anxiously. "Because I can get you a better job elsewhere. There now!" "Let's hear of your love affair," said Mavis, partly satisfied by Miss Toombs's reason for not wishing her to return to the place where her lover was. "Five weeks ago, a man strode into our office at the factory; tall, big, upright, sunburned."
Before Mavis left the churchyard, the stars enabled her to discern her path. She hastened in the direction of Melkbridge, wondering if her absence had been discovered. As before, she believed that she was followed, but strove to think that the footsteps she was all but certain she heard were the echo of her own. As she hurried through the town, this impression became a conviction.
If her figure were not as unduly stout as the skinny virgins of Melkbridge declared it to be, there was no denying the rude health apparent in the girl's face and carriage.
She purposed driving with her baby and Jill in a fly the seven miles necessary to take her to Melkbridge. She choose this means of locomotion in order to secure the privacy which might not be hers if she took the train to her destination. During the last few days, her boy had not enjoyed his usual health; he had lost appetite and could not sleep for any length of time.
It had been on the day when she had come down to Melkbridge fully confident of securing work with the Devitt family. This had only been a few months ago, but to Mavis it seemed long years: she had experienced so much in the time.
But Windebank pleaded and Miss Toombs wrote to no purpose. Before Windebank had said good-bye at Paddington, he again made Mavis promise that she would not hesitate to communicate at once with him should she meet with further trouble. The gravity with which he made this request awakened disquiet in her mind, which diminished as her proximity to Melkbridge increased.
"Solomon says a good many things," said Mavis gravely, as she remembered how the recollection of certain passion-charged verses from the "Song" had caused her to linger by the canal at Melkbridge on a certain memorable evening of her life, with, as it proved, disastrous consequences to herself. "Have you ever read the 'Song'?" asked Harold. "Yes." "I love it, but I daren't read it now." "Why?"
The good woman was ignorant that the starvation wages which her husband's companies paid were directly responsible for the existence of the local evil she deplored, and which she did her best to eradicate. Miss Spraggs, Hilda Devitt's elder sister, lived with the family at Melkbridge House.
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