To eat and drink and clothe herself, and, if possible, to provide eating and drinking and clothes for her future years, this was the business of life, this was the only real necessity.

She had nothing to say in opposition to Mrs.Davis, and therefore she went on crying, and again wiped her eyes with the glass-cloth.
Mrs.Davis, however, was no stern monitor, unindulgent to the weakness of human nature.

When she saw how Norah took to heart her sad fate, she resolved to make one more effort in her favour.
She consequently dressed herself very nicely, put on her best bonnet, and took the unprecedented step of going off to the Internal Navigation, and calling on Charley in the middle of his office.
Charley was poking over the Kennett and Avon lock entries, with his usual official energy, when the office messenger came up and informed him that a lady was waiting to see him.
'A lady!' said Charley: 'what lady ?' and he immediately began thinking of the Woodwards, whom he was to meet that afternoon at Chiswick.
'I'm sure I can't say, sir: all that she said was that she was a lady,' answered the messenger, falsely, for he well knew that the woman was Mrs.Davis, of the 'Cat and Whistle.' Now the clerks at the Internal Navigation were badly off for a waiting-room; and in no respect can the different ranks of different public offices be more plainly seen than in the presence or absence of such little items of accommodation as this.

At the Weights and Measures there was an elegant little chamber, carpeted, furnished with leathern-bottomed chairs, and a clock, supplied with cream-laid note-paper, new pens, and the _Times_ newspaper, quite a little Elysium, in which to pass half an hour, while the Secretary, whom one had called to see, was completing his last calculation on the matter of the decimal coinage.

But there were no such comforts at the Internal Navigation.