CHAPTER III PAGAN STREET

Shirley sat back on her heels and poked viciously at the small, unresponsive fire which flickered spasmodically in the grate, threatening to come to an untimely end at any moment. June had blustered in unsmilingly, bleak with chilly rain and wind, and a fire was a necessary extravagance. Only this obstinate, black-looking handful of coals in the high-barred fire-place—which last was not nearly as black as it should have been, but showed unsightly patches of red rust here and there—compared very unfavourably with th…