The baby shan't cost you more than five shillings a week till you
get a situation as plain cook. Here is the address--Miss Rice, Avondale
Road, West Kensington."
XXII
Avondale Road was an obscure corner of the suburb--obscure, for it had
just sprung into existence. The scaffolding that had built it now littered
an adjoining field, where in a few months it would rise about Horsely
Gardens, whose red gables and tiled upper walls will correspond
unfailingly with those of Avondale Road. Nowhere in this neighbourhood
could Esther detect signs of eighteen pounds a year. Scanning the Venetian
blinds of the single drawing-room window, she said to herself, "Hot joint
today, cold the next." She noted the trim iron railings and the spare
shrubs, and raising her eyes she saw the tiny gable windows of the
cupboard-like rooms where the single servant kept in these houses slept.
A few steps more brought her to 41, the corner house. The thin passage and
the meagre staircase confirmed Esther in the impression she had received
from the aspect of the street; and she felt that the place was more
suitable to the gaunt woman with iron-grey hair who waited in the passage.
This woman looked apprehensively at Esther, and when Esther said that she
had come after the place a painful change of expression passed over her
face, and she said--
"You'll get it; I'm too old for anything but charing.
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