LITMIR.BIZ

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want us to go into a big house?’ asked Mrs. Mutimer. She seemed to pay little attention to the wider aspects of the change, but to fix on the details she could best understand, those which put her fears in palpable shape.

      ‘I didn’t say a big one, but a larger than this. We’re not going to play the do-nothing gentlefolk; but all the same our life won’t and can’t be what it has been. There’s no choice. You’ve worked hard all your life, mother, and it’s only fair you should come in for a bit of rest. We’ll find a house somewhere out Green Lanes way, or in Highbury or Holloway.’

      He laughed again.

      ‘So there’s the best of it—the worst of it, as you say. Just take a night to turn it over. Most likely I shall go to Belwick again to-morrow afternoon.’

      He paused, and his mother, after bending her head to bite off an end of cotton, asked—

      ‘You’ll tell Emma?’

      ‘I shall go round to-night.’

      A little later Richard left the house for this purpose. His step was firmer than ever, his head more upright Walking along the crowded streets, he saw nothing; there was a fixed smile on his lips, the smile of a man to whom the world pays tribute. Never having suffered actual want, and blessed with sanguine temperament, he knew nothing of that fierce exultation, that wrathful triumph over fate, which comes to men of passionate mood smitten by the lightning-flash of unhoped prosperity. At present he was well-disposed to all men; even against capitalists and ‘profitmongers’ he could not have railed heartily Capitalists? Was he not one himself? Aye, but he would prove himself such a one as you do not meet with every day; and the foresight of deeds which should draw the eyes of men upon him, which should shout his name abroad, softened his judgments with the charity of satisfied ambition. He would be the glorified representative of his class. He would show the world how a self-taught working man conceived the duties and privileges of wealth. He would shame those dunder-headed, callous-hearted aristocrats, those ravening bourgeois. Opportunity—what else had he wanted? No longer would his voice be lost in petty lecture-halls, answered only by the applause of a handful of mechanics. Ere many months had passed, crowds should throng to hear him; his gospel would be trumpeted over the land. To what might he not attain? The educated, the refined, men and women—

      He was at the entrance of a dark passage, where his feet stayed themselves by force of habit. He turned out of the street, and walked more slowly towards the house in which Emma Vine and her sisters lived. Having reached the door, he paused, but again took a few paces forward. Then he came back and rang the uppermost of five bells. In waiting, he looked vaguely up and down the street.

      It was Emma herself who opened to him. The dim light showed a smile of pleasure and surprise.

      ‘You’ve come to ask about Jane?’ she said. ‘She hasn’t been quite so bad since last night.’

      ‘I’m glad to hear it. Can I come up?’

      ‘Will you?’

      He entered, and Emma closed the door. It was pitch dark.

      ‘I wish I’d brought a candle down,’ Emma said, moving back along the passage. ‘Mind there’s a pram at the foot of the stairs.’

      The perambulator was avoided successfully by both, and they ascended the bare boards of the staircase. On each landing prevailed a distinct odour; first came the damp smell of newly-washed clothes, then the scent of fried onions, then the workroom of some small craftsman exhaled varnish. The topmost floor seemed the purest; it was only stuffy.

      Richard entered an uncarpeted room which had to serve too many distinct purposes to allow of its being orderly in appearance. In one corner was a bed, where two little children lay asleep; before the window stood a sewing-machine, about which was heaped a quantity of linen; a table in the midst was half covered with a cloth, on which was placed a loaf and butter, the other half being piled with several dresses requiring the needle. Two black patches on the low ceiling showed in what positions the lamp stood by turns.

      Emma’s eldest sister was moving about the room. Hers were the children; her husband had been dead a year or more. She was about thirty years of age, and had a slatternly appearance; her face was peevish, and seemed to grudge the half-smile with which it received the visitor.

      ‘You’ve no need to look round you,’ she said. ‘We’re in & regular pig-stye, and likely to be. Where’s there a chair?’

      She shook some miscellaneous articles on to the floor to provide a seat.

      ‘For mercy’s sake don’t speak too loud, and wake them children. Bertie’s had the earache; he’s been crying all day. What with him and Jane we’ve had a blessing, I can tell you. Can I put these supper things away, Emma?’

      ‘I’ll do it,’ was the other’s reply. ‘Won’t you have a bit more, Kate?’

      ‘I’ve got no mind for eating. Well, you may cut a slice and put it on the mantelpiece. I’ll go and sit with Jane.’

      Richard sat and looked about the room absently. The circumstances of his own family had never fallen below the point at which it is possible to have regard for decency; the growing up of himself and of his brothers and sister had brought additional resources to meet extended needs, and the Mutimer characteristics had formed a safeguard against improvidence. He was never quite at his ease in this poverty-cumbered room, which he seldom visited.

      ‘You ought to have a fire,’ he said.

      ‘There’s one in the other room,’ replied Kate. ‘One has to serve us.’

      ‘But you can’t cook there.’

      ‘Cook? We can boil a potato, and that’s about all the cooking we can do now-a-days.’

      She moved to the door as she spoke, and, before leaving the room, took advantage of Richard’s back being turned to make certain exhortatory signs to her sister. Emma averted her head.

      Kate closed the door behind her. Emma, having removed the eatables to the cupboard, came near to Richard and placed her arm gently upon his shoulders. He looked at her kindly.

      ‘Kate’s been so put about with Bertie,’ she said, in a tone of excuse. ‘And she was up nearly all last night.’

      ‘She never takes things like you do,’ Richard remarked.

      ‘She’s got more to bear. There’s the children always making her anxious. She took Alf to the hospital this afternoon, and the doctor says he must have—I forget the name, somebody’s food. But it’s two-and-ninepence for ever such a little tin. They don’t think as his teeth ‘ll ever come.’

      ‘Oh, I daresay they will,’ said Richard encouragingly.

      He had put his arm about her. Emma knelt down by him, and rested her head against his shoulder.

      ‘I’m tired,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve had to go twice to the Minories to-day. I’m so afraid I shan’t be able to hold my eyes open with Jane, and Kate’s tireder still.’

      She did not speak as if seeking for sympathy it was only the natural utterance of her thoughts in a moment of restful confidence. Uttermost weariness was a condition too familiar to the girl to be spoken of in any but a patient, matter-of-fact tone. But it was priceless soothing to let her forehead repose against the heart whose love was the one and sufficient blessing of her life. Her brown hair was very soft and fine; a lover of another kind would have pressed his lips upon it. Richard was thinking of matters more practical. At another time his indignation—in such a case right good and manful—would have boiled over at the thought of these poor women crushed in slavery to feed the world’s dastard selfishness; this evening his mood was more complaisant, and he smiled as one at ease.

      ‘Hadn’t you better give up your work?’ he said.

      Emma raised her head. In the few moments of repose her eyelids had drooped with growing heaviness; she looked at him as if she had just been awakened to some great surprise.

      ‘Give up work? How can I?’

      ‘I

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