“I shan’t pay any more than ninepence,” the hard-faced woman said coldly, and I was too tired to argue the point. I was beginning to appreciate what it means to do manual labour for a living. I suppose I was still influenced by my normal valuation of ninepence, otherwise I cannot account for my inexcusable extravagance. I actually bought myself a cup of tea and a piece of cake, which reduced my capital to fourpence! Four coppers between me and a night in the street. It sounds romantic, but there is a grim hardness about the reality, difficult, if not impossible, for inexperience to gauge. When one has become acclimatised to being homeless, the bed problem, though always there, is less urgent, but I was still too new to take things philosophically. It had begun to rain, and to be on the streets when it is wet is to touch the very dregs of misery.