The Crosses, mother and daughter, lived at Walham Green.

The house was less pleasant than another which Mrs.Cross owned at Putney, but it also represented a lower rental, and poverty obliged them to take this into account.

When the second house stood tenantless, as had now been the case for half a year, Mrs.Cross' habitually querulous comment on life rose to a note of acrimony very afflictive to her daughter Bertha.
The two bore as little resemblance to each other, physical or mental, as mother and child well could.

Bertha Cross was a sensible, thoughtful girl, full of kindly feeling, and blest with a humorous turn that enabled her to see the amusing rather than the carking side of her pinched life.

These virtues she had from her father.