It was just as if you were to say she lived in the basement-back at Number 27.
A hard life!...
At sixteen she'd left Stratford and come up to London as kitching-maid.
Yes, she was born in Stratford-on-Avon.

Shakespeare, sir?
No, people were always arsking her about him.

But she'd never heard his name until she saw it on the theatres.
Nothing remained of Stratford except that "sitting in the fire-place of a evening you could see the stars through the chimley," and "Mother always 'ad 'er side of bacon, 'anging from the ceiling." And there was something--a bush, there was--at the front door, that smelt ever so nice.

But the bush was very vague.

She'd only remembered it once or twice in the hospital, when she'd been taken bad.
That was a dreadful place--her first place.