Gradually she grew quieter; suddenly she started to her feet, began to laugh at the top of her bent, and, producing a parcel from under her coat, handed round a selection of pigs’ trotters.

Evanescent feeling? Easy tears? Hysterical outburst? Not a bit of it. Wait until you have no home to cry in, and then you will understand. Wait until you have walked about the streets, cut off from your kind as completely as though you were in a desert. Wait until, by a rare piece of luck, you get the money to pay for a bed, and can claim something of that community of interest and affection which goes by the name of home. Then, no sooner is your foot beyond the threshold, be it the kitchen of Kennedy Court, a doss house in the Waterloo Bridge Road, or any of the public lodging places, you will let fling, and laugh and scream and scoff, releasing the pent-up emotions of long and weary hours.