It was at a poor doss house in the North of London that I saw a girl give way to sudden irrepressible grief. She was not like the woman in Kennedy Court, she was nourished on too low a diet for such vigorous display. She sat on her bed in the drab garment, discoloured by wind and weather, which had grown to her like an animal’s skin, and the tears poured down her face. She had not a handkerchief on which to wipe them, and now and again she put up her arm, with its dirty coat sleeve, and mopped her cheeks. At first we did not take any notice. It is not polite to offer sympathy or comment. But when her thin shoulders began to shake, and her hands opened and shut convulsively, we knew the breaking point was reached. She explained that her feet hurt her, and we took off the unutterable pieces of leather, bound together by string, and the rags that had once been stockings. Her feet were a mass of running sores, only the most superhuman courage could have forced her to walk upon them. We got round the old woman in charge of the place and persuaded her to produce hot water, and one of us bathed the poor feet and dried them on an apology for a towel. But we knew that in a very little while the flesh would be as discoloured and as painful as it had been.