CHAPTER IX.
The weather had cleared to a compromise. The dome of St.
Paul's swelled dimly out of the fog as Elfrida turned
into Fleet Street, and the railway bridge that hangs over
the heads of the people at the bottom of Ludgate Hill
seemed a curiously solid structure connecting space with
space. Fleet Street, wet and brown, and standing in all
unremembered fashions, lifted its antiquated head and
waited for more rain; the pavements glistened briefly,
till the tracking heels of the crowd gave them back their
squalor; and there was everywhere that newness of turmoil
that seems to burst even in the turbulent streets of the
City when it stops raining. The girl made her way toward
Charing Cross with the westward-going crowd. It went with
a steady, respectable jog-trot, very careful of its skirts
and umbrellas and the bottoms of its trousers; she took
pleasure in hastening past it with her light gait. She
would walk to the _Consul_ office, which was in the
vicinity of the Haymarket; indeed, she must, for the sake
of economy. "I ought really to be _very_ careful," thought
Elfrida. "I've only eight sovereigns left, and I can't
--oh, I _can't_ ask them for any more at home.
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