and, in answer to my inquiry whether I
might ask him a question or two, said,
"Cerrtainly." There being a window at
each end of this room, back and front, it
might have been ventilated; but it was
shut up tight, to keep the cold out, and
was very sickening.

The wife, an intelligent quick woman,
rose and stood at her husband's elbow, and
he glanced up at her as if for help. It soon
appeared that he was rather deaf. He was
a slow simple fellow of about thirty.

"What was he by trade?"

"Gentleman asks what are you by trade,
John?"

"I am a boiler-maker;" looking about
him with an exceedingly perplexed air, as
if for a boiler that had unaccountably
vanished.

"He ain't a mechanic you understand,
sir," the wife put in, " he's only a labourer."

"Are you in work?"

He looked up at his wife again. " Gentleman
says are you in work, John?"

"In work!" cried this forlorn boiler-
maker, staring aghast at his wife, and then
working his vision's way very slowly round
to me; " Lord, no!"

"Ah! He ain't indeed!" said the poor
woman, shaking her head, as she looked at
the four children in succession, and then
at him.

"Work!" said the boiler-maker, still
seeking that evaporated boiler, first in
my countenance, then in the air, and then
in the features of his second son at his
knee: "I wish I was in work! I haven't
had more than a day's work to do, this
three weeks."

"How have you lived?"

A faint gleam of admiration lighted up
the face of the would-be boiler-maker, as
he stretched out the short sleeve of his
threadbare canvas jacket, and replied, pointing
her out: "on the work of the wife."

I forget where boiler-making had gone
to, or where he supposed it had gone to;
but he added some resigned information on
that head, coupled with an expression of
his belief that it was never coming back.

The cheery helpfulness of the wife was
very remarkable. She did slop-work;
made pea-jackets. She produced the pea-
jacket then in hand, and spread it out upon
the bed: the only piece of furniture in the
room on which to spread it. She showed
how much of it she made, and how much
was afterwards finished off by the machine.
According to her calculation at the moment,
deducting what her trimming cost
her, she got for making a pea-jacket ten-
pence halfpenny, and she could make one
in something less than two days. But,
you see, it come to her through two hands,
and of course it didn't come through the
second hand for nothing. Why did it come
through the second hand at all? Why, this
way. The second hand took the risk of
the given-out work, you see. If she had
money enough to pay the security deposit
—call it two pound—she could get the
work from the first hand, and so the second
would not have to be deducted for. But
having no money at all, the second hand
come in and took its profit, and so the
whole worked down to tenpence halfpenny.
Having explained all this with great intelligence,
even with some little pride, and
without a whine or murmur, she folded
her work again, sat down by her husband's
side at the washing stool, and resumed her
dinner of dry bread. Mean as the meal
was, on the bare board, with its old gallipots
for cups, and what not other sordid
makeshifts; shabby as the woman was in
dress, and toning down towards the Bosjesman
colour, with want of nutriment and
washing; there was positively a dignity in
her, as the family anchor just holding
the poor shipwrecked boiler-maker's bark.
When I left the room, the boiler-maker's
eyes were slowly turned towards her, as if
his last hope of ever again seeing that
vanished boiler lay in her direction.

These people had never applied for parish
relief but once; and that was when the
husband met with a disabling accident at
his work.

Not many doors from here, I went into
a room on the first floor. The woman
apologised for its being in "an untidy
mess." The day was Saturday, and she
was boiling the children's clothes in a
saucepan on the hearth. There was nothing
else into which she could have put
them. There was no crockery, or tinware,
or tub, or bucket. There was an old gallipot
or two, and there was a broken bottle
or so, and there were some broken boxes
for seats. The last small scraping of coals
left, was raked together in a corner of the
floor. There were some rags in an open
cupboard, also on the floor. In a corner of
the room was a crazy old French bedstead,
with a man lying on his back upon it in a
ragged pilot jacket, and rough oilskin fan-
tail hat. The room was perfectly black.
It was difficult to believe, at first, that it
was not purposely coloured black: the
walls were so begrimed.