“How much for a room?” I inquired, ignoring her curiosity.

She looked me up and down with frank surprise.  “I don’t let rooms, not to my reg’lar lodgers, much less casuals.”

“Then I’ll have to look along a bit,” I said, with marked disappointment.

But the sight of my ten shillings had made her keen.  “I can let you have a nice bed in with two hother men,” she urged.  “Good, respectable men, an’ steady.”

“But I don’t want to sleep with two other men,” I objected.

“You don’t ‘ave to.  There’s three beds in the room, an’ hit’s not a very small room.”

“How much?” I demanded.

“‘Arf a crown a week, two an’ six, to a regular lodger.  You’ll fancy the men, I’m sure.  One works in the ware’ouse, an’ ’e’s been with me two years now.  An’ the hother’s bin with me six—­six years, sir, an’ two months comin’ nex’ Saturday.  ’E’s a scene-shifter,” she went on.  “A steady, respectable man, never missin’ a night’s work in the time ’e’s bin with me.  An’ ’e likes the ’ouse; ’e says as it’s the best ’e can do in the w’y of lodgin’s.  I board ‘im, an’ the hother lodgers too.”

“I suppose he’s saving money right along,” I insinuated innocently.

“Bless you, no!  Nor can ’e do as well helsewhere with ’is money.”

And I thought of my own spacious West, with room under its sky and unlimited air for a thousand Londons; and here was this man, a steady and reliable man, never missing a night’s work, frugal and honest, lodging in one room with two other men, paying two dollars and a half per month for it, and out of his experience adjudging it to be the best he could do!  And here was I, on the strength of the ten shillings in my pocket, able to enter in with my rags and take up my bed with him.  The human soul is a lonely thing, but it must be very lonely sometimes when there are three beds to a room, and casuals with ten shillings are admitted.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Thirteen years, sir; an’ don’t you think you’ll fancy the lodgin’?”

The while she talked she was shuffling ponderously about the small kitchen in which she cooked the food for her lodgers who were also boarders.  When I first entered, she had been hard at work, nor had she let up once throughout the conversation.  Undoubtedly she was a busy woman.  “Up at half-past five,” “to bed the last thing at night,” “workin’ fit ter drop,” thirteen years of it, and for reward, grey hairs, frowzy clothes, stooped shoulders, slatternly figure, unending toil in a foul and noisome coffee-house that faced on an alley ten feet between the walls, and a waterside environment that was ugly and sickening, to say the least.

“You’ll be hin hagain to ’ave a look?” she questioned wistfully, as I went out of the door.

And as I turned and looked at her, I realized to the full the deeper truth underlying that very wise old maxim:  “Virtue is its own reward.”