Read it through once

The cab that took Esther to her lodging cost half-a-crown, and this waste of money frightened her thrifty nature, inherited through centuries of working folk. The waste, however, had ceased at last, and it was none too soon, she thought, as she sat in the room she had taken near the hospital, in a little eight-roomed house, kept by an old woman whose son was a bricklayer.