The only reference of which I could now dispose was the recommendation of me by my landlady to a place of business which largely employed expert needle-women.

It is needless for me to tell you how miserably work of that sort is remunerated: you have read about it in the newspapers.

As long as my health lasted I contrived to live and to keep out of debt.

Few girls could have resisted as long as I did the slowly-poisoning influences of crowded work-room, insufficient nourishment, and almost total privation of exercise.

My life as a child had been a life in the open air: it had helped to strengthen a constitution naturally hardy, naturally free from all taint of hereditary disease.