One of the Populace

Winter. Fog so thick the streetlamps are lit all day. Sara is sent on a long errand in sleet. She has not eaten since morning. On the way back she finds a small coin in the gutter — fourpence, she discovers on examination. She has not had her own money for a year. She stands in front of the baker's window for a moment and then goes in and buys six buns.

She steps out of the bakery and sees a child on the doorstep. Younger than Sara, in worse clothes, crouched in the cold, looking at the buns with an expression Sara recognizes as hunger in its serious form. Sara stands for a moment. Then she gives the child the buns — five of them; she keeps one. She does this without ceremony. The baker's wife, watching from inside, has been feeling sorry for the thin girl in the worn-out coat, and she takes note of what she sees.

Sara goes back to the attic that evening and tells Becky about it. Becky says that was very good of her. Sara says it was only right. They sit under their coverlets — this is the chapter in which the Bastille game is described at length: the attic as a French revolutionary prison, Sara the prisoner of conscience, Becky in the next cell, the rats as fellow inhabitants of the dungeon — and Sara explains the discipline she has worked out: what you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is make it think of something else. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. When it works, she is all right.