On the mattress a child is sleeping, covered with a tattered old mantle; MARY is bending over her, crooning a song.  The woman is still quite young, and must have been very pretty; but her cheeks are hollow and there are great circles round her eyes; her face is very pale and bloodless.  Her dress is painfully worn and shabby, but displays pathetic attempts at neatness.  The only light in the room comes from the street lamp on the pavement above.

JOE comes down the area steps, and enters.  His clothes are of the familiar colourless, shapeless kind one sees at street corners; he would be a pleasant-looking young fellow enough were it not that his face is abnormally lined, and pinched, and weather-beaten.  He shambles in, with the intense weariness of a man who has for hours been forcing benumbed limbs to move; he shakes himself, on the threshold, dog-fashion, to get rid of the rain. MARY first makes sure that the child is asleep, then rises eagerly and goes to him.  Her face falls as she notes his air of dejection.

MARY. [Wistfully.] Nothing, Joe?

JOE.  Nothing.  Not a farthing.  Nothing.

     [MARY turns away and checks a moan.

JOE.  Nothing at all.  Same as yesterday—­worse than yesterday—­I did bring home a few coppers—­And you?

MARY.  A lady gave Minnie some food—­

JOE. [Heartily.] Bless her for that!

MARY.  Took her into the pastrycook’s, Joe—­

JOE.  And the kiddie had a tuck-out?  Thank God!  And you?

MARY.  Minnie managed to hide a great big bun for me.

JOE.  The lady didn’t give you anything?

MARY.  Only a lecture, Joe, for bringing the child out on so bitter a day.

JOE. [With a sour laugh, as he sits on a chair.] Ho, ho!  Always so ready with their lectures, aren’t they?  “Shouldn’t beg, my man!  Never give to beggars in the street!”—­Look at me, I said to one of them.  Feel my arm.  Tap my chest.  I tell you I’m starving, and they’re starving at home.—­“Never give to beggars in the street.”

MARY. [Laying a hand on his arm.] Oh, Joe, you’re wet!

JOE.  It’s been raining hard the last three hours—­pouring.  My stars, it’s cold.  Couldn’t we raise a bit of fire, Mary?

MARY.  With what, Joe?

JOE. [After a look round, suddenly getting up, seizing a ricketty chair by the wall, breaking off the legs.] With this!  Wonderful fine furniture they give you on the Hire System—­so solid and substantial—­as advertised. [He breaks the flimsy thing up, as he speaks.] And to think we paid for this muck, in the days we were human beings—­paid about three times its value!  And to think of the poor devils, poor devils like us, who sweated their life-blood out to make it—­and of the blood-sucking devils who sold it and got fat on it—­and now back it goes to the devil it came from, and we can at least get warm for a minute. [He crams the wood into the grate.] Got any paper, Mary?