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situation to press in upon her.
    For now the attic room in a clump of ancient houses hanging over a tiny canal off the river, with tipsy awnings and broken shutters, was hers—at least until the end of the month, she judged. She paid upon every application, so the landlady approved of her and promptly mended windows and locks, but Leda had the foreboding that she would not be such a favorite if the woman discovered that she no longer had employment.
    The situation would not last for long, of course. Leda would visit her ladies in South Street. They would give her the character reference that Madame Elise had denied, and Leda would start over—as a typist this time, which was what she should have done to begin with.
    She chose to walk now, until she could unlock her account book from its little tin box and reckon up her situation precisely. Not wishing to arrive too early and arouse suspicion in the landlady's heart, she stopped in the Strand at an A.B.C. Tea-shop for Ladies, where she drank a dish and ate a cucumber sandwich. Then she bought an extra bun, lingering at her table beneath the cheerful lace curtains as long as possible on the strength of threepence. There was no wicker dress basket to lug today, so she tucked the uneaten bun into her purse as she walked along the embankment by the river and joined the flood of pedestrians, canvas-covered wagons, and cabs across London Bridge and into the malodorous industrial districts south of the river.
    Here she preferred not to dally at an idle pace, but picked her way among the crowds and delivery vans with vigor. It was awkward to be walking unaccompanied; she wouldn't like to be taken for a lady of questionable character. But Miss Myrtle said that quality would always speak for itself, so Leda kept her chin up and her pace elegant, ignoring, for the most part, the scarecrow figures who lounged in shadowed doorways and lingered at the coffee stalls.
    The first wave of odors beyond the bridge was pleasant and interesting: orris root, tea, oil of rosewood and pine from Hay's Wharf, the intermingled scents of the whole vast world come to breathe in a London warehouse. An old man with a queer, blank expression sat huddled against a lamppost. Next to him, a skinny half-grown pup lay panting, staring round with bright canine alertness at the passing flow of shoes and trousers. Leda walked past. Two yards on, she turned suddenly, rummaging in her purse. She marched back, thrust the bun in the old man's hand, and turned to walk on as he mumbled something after her. She could hear the pup whining in eagerness.
    A train came roaring past on the line into London Bridge Station, the same rumble that woke her every morning at five, as regular as an alarm. Here the smell of vinegar overwhelmed the neighborhood, but she supposed there might have been worse odors in an area of industry—she had had whiffs of the tanneries now and again when the wind was in the east, and subtle, sickening waves of chloroform drifted sometimes from the hospital. Gutter children shouted at her halfheartedly as she passed, but she ignored them, and they left off to scratch at their bare toes and stare.
    In her own street, the children were better kept. Indeed, the dictatorial couple in the house next door operated an orphanage of sorts, and took in a few children from the workhouse sometimes, and kept them ferociously neat and pretty and well-behaved, never allowed them out-of-doors into the dirt, and tried to find sponsors and make arrangements for them. One beautiful little boy had been taken up by a benevolent gentleman and adopted away last month, just like Oliver Twist in Mr. Dickens' story.
    Until that had happened, Leda had actually fancied that perhaps really it was a house like that one in the book, where the children trained as pickpockets. She'd considered mentioning her suspicions to the police, but had been a little afraid that they would laugh at her. Or worse, that her landlady would not