“More than I have.  No, sir,” said she sadly, and with the first touch of sweetness they had yet heard in her voice.  “I’ve cured my own bacon, and I must eat it.  There’s none down there minds me, but them that would be ashamed of me.  And I couldn’t go without he, and they wouldn’t take he in; so I must just bide.”  And she went on washing.

“God help her!” said Campbell, as he went downstairs.

“Misery breeds that temper, and only misery, in our people.  I can show you as thorough gentlemen and ladies, people round Whitbury, living on ten shillings a week, as you will show me in Belgravia living on five thousand a year.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Campbell....  “So ‘she couldn’t go without he,’ drunken dog as he is!  Thus it is with them all the world over.”

“So much the worse for them,” said Tom cynically, “and for the men too.  They make fools of us first with our over-fondness of them; and then they let us make fools of ourselves with their over-fondness of us.”

“I fancy sometimes that they were all meant to be the mates of angels, and stooped to men as a pis aller; reversing the old story of the sons of heaven and the daughters of men.”

“And accounting for the present degeneracy.  When the sons of heaven married the daughters of men, their offspring were giants and men of renown.  Now the sons of men marry the daughters of heaven, and the offspring is Wiggle, Waggle, Windbag, and Redtape.”

They visited one public-house after another, till the girl found for them the man they wanted, a shabby, sodden-visaged fellow, with a would-be jaunty air of conscious shrewdness and vanity, who stood before the bar, his thumbs in his armholes, and laying down the law to a group of coster-boys, for want of a better audience.

The girl, after sundry plucks at his coat-tail, stopped him in the midst of his oration, and explained her errand somewhat fearfully.

Mr. Barker bent down his head on one side, to signify that he was absorbed in attention to her news; and then drawing himself up once more, lifted his greasy hat high in air, bowed to the very floor, and broke forth:—­

  “Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors: 
  A man of war, and eke a man of peace—­
  That is, if you come peaceful; and if not,
  Have we not Hiren here?”

And the fellow put himself into a fresh attitude.

“We come in peace, my good sir,” said Tom; “first to listen to your talented effusions, and next for a little private conversation on a subject on which—­” but Mr. Barker interrupted,—­

  “To listen, and to drink?  The muse is dry,
  And Pegasus doth thirst for Hippocrene,
  And fain would paint—­imbibe the vulgar call—­
  Or hot or cold, or long or short—­Attendant!”

The bar girl, who knew his humour, came forward.

  “Glasses all round—­these noble knights will pay—­
  Of hottest hot, and stiffest stiff.  Thou mark’st me? 
  Now to your quest!”