In that dreadful house where Kate worked in London and they slept in the basement, and where people's feet were continually passing over the iron grating above the small window, even into the dead of night, Kate cried often, and her face always looked swollen. The basement was very damp, too. She remembered how ill she felt one night, and how she went to sleep, feeling a pain in her chest, and woke up to find herself in a ward with a lot of other children. When she was better, Kate had not taken her back to the house, but came here, to this house which smelt of cabbages and was so full of old furniture and pictures that you could hardly move.
Miss Patterson-Carey, who owned the house, liked to tell her all about the furniture and pictures; they had belonged to her grandmother and her mother. She said that if they knew she was reduced to taking in guests for a living they would turn in their graves. She had explained that when she was a little girl they lived in The Square and kept eight servants, and that her father drove his prancing bays up and down the front. But now she had been reduced to living above The Square, in this house which was called Wide Sea View. Which was very funny, Annie thought, since the only place from which you could view the sea was the attic window.
Miss Patterson-Carey told her all these things. She didn't tell Kate, because that would have kept Kate from her work, and she had the guests to see to and all the house. The guests were all old people, and seemed to wear a lot of clothes.
Annie didn't like Miss Patterson-Carey; she was mean and religious and was always giving her tracts to read. All the guests read tracts, too.
Sometimes the house seemed to be full of all kinds of tracts. Miss Patterson-Carey had called her a naughty girl for reading comics; she said they weren't 'holy reading', and she didn't allow anything in the house that wasn't 'holy reading'.
Now it was winter and there weren't so many guests, Miss Patterson-Carey sometimes came into the kitchen at night and talked to Kate. But it was all about God and a thing called . retribution.
Kate never answered her, which seemed to annoy Miss Patterson-Carey, who usually brought up the subject of how difficult it was to obtain a situation where you could keep a child.
The alarm gave a warning bur. rrr, but before it could get fully going Kate had switched it off; so Annie knew that she had been awake, too.
Kate got up immediately and started to dress by the light of a candle, and Annie whispered, "Kate, can I come down with you?"
"You should be asleep," said Kate.
"And it's cold down there. Wait until I get the fire on."
"I don't mind the cold, Kate. I don't like staying up here alone, and I could help you."
"Very well," Kate said.
"But be quiet, mind."
Annie got out of bed and hurried into her clothes; she was ready almost as soon as Kate.
Leading the way down the bare attic stairs, Kate whispered, "Be careful of the torn carpet on the second flight, mind."
They crept past Miss Patterson-Carey's door on the first- floor landing and down the last flight into the kitchen. It struck icy-cold, and Kate busied herself in cleaning out and lighting the kitchen fire.
Annie asked, "Shall I do the sitting-room fire tor you, Kate?"
"You'll never be able to light it, dear, there's hardly any paper left."
"I've last week's comic," said Annie.
"And, oh, I know where there's some paper, Kate. In the bottom of the vegetable basket; I saw it sticking through the slats yesterday when the man left it. Shall I take the vegetables out and get it?"
"Yes, you can do that," said Kate.
"I'll light the gas, and then you can get on with it. But try not to make a noise."
Annie emptied the box and took out the folded newspaper. She picked up some sticks and went into the sitting-room and set about doing the hearth. She opened out the newspaper and crumpled it loosely, as Kate had shown her, and laid it in the grate. She was laying the sticks in a crisscross pattern on it when a large black- printed word caught her eye. Something about it was familiar. She looked more closely. It said tyne side She knelt, her head bent sideways, drinking in the word.
It was like a fresh breeze in this stuffy, cluttered room. She sat back on her heels, her head still bent sideways, and gazed at the word.
She wondered, abstractedly, what the paper could have to say about Tyneside. She lifted two sticks away, and disclosed the word tragedy .
tyne side tragedy. Somebody had been knocked down, she thought; they always said that in the paper when anyone had been knocked down. She wondered who it was;
would it be anyone whom she knew? Hurriedly she pulled away the sticks, and, lifting out the paper, smoothed it on the hearth. She was reading intently when Kate came in, saying, "Oh, my
