The Keeper of Conscience by Israel Zangwill

Salvina Brill walked to and fro in the dingy Hackney Terrace, waiting till her mother should return with the house-key. So far as change of scene was concerned the little pupil-teacher might as well have stood still. Everywhere bow-windows, Venetian blinds, little front gardens -- all that had represented domestic grandeur to her after a childhood of apartments in Spitalfields, though her subsequent glimpse of the West End home in which her sister Kitty was governess, had made her dazedly aware of Alps beyond Alps.

Though only seventeen, Salvina was not superficially sweet and could win no consideration from the seated males in the homeward train, and the heat of the weather and the crush of humanity -- high hats sandwiched between workmen's tool-baskets -- had made her head ache. Her day at the Whitechapel school had already been trying, and Thursday was always heavy with the accumulated fatigues of the week. It was unfortunate that her mother should be late, but she remembered how at breakfast the good creature had promised father to make a little excursion to the Borough and take a packet of tea to the house of some distant relatives of his, who were sitting _shivah_ (seven days' mourning). The non-possession of a servant made it necessary to lock up the house and pull down the blinds, when its sole occupant went visiting.