It was painfully dark in these side streets.  The lamps drew beams such a short distance that they were as useless as the hidden stars.  Only down each street one saw mild spots starting out of the gloom, fascinating in their regularity, like shining beads set at prepared intervals in a body of jet.  The houses were all in darkness, because evening meals were laid in the kitchens:  the front rooms were all kept for Sunday use, excepting when the Emeralds and Edwins and Geralds and Dorises were practising upon their mothers’ pianos.  Then you could hear a din!  But not now.  Now all was as quiet as night, and even doors were not slammed.  Jenny crossed the street and turned a corner.  On the corner itself was a small chandler’s shop, with “Magnificent Tea, per 2/- lb.”; “Excellent Tea, per 1/8d. lb”; “Good Tea, per 1/4d. lb.” advertised in great bills upon its windows above a huge collection of unlikely goods gathered together like a happy family in its tarnished abode.  Jenny passed the dully-lighted shop, and turned in at her own gate.  In a moment she was inside the house, sniffing at the warm odour-laden air within doors.  Her mouth drew down at the corners.  Stew to-night!  An amused gleam, lost upon the dowdy passage, fled across her bright eyes.  Emmy wouldn’t have thanked her for that!  Emmy—­sick to death herself of the smell of cooking—­would have slammed down the pot in despairing rage.

In the kitchen a table was laid; and Emmy stretched her head back to peer from the scullery, where she was busy at the gas stove.  She did not say a word.  Jenny also was speechless; and went as if without thinking to the kitchen cupboard.  The table was only half-laid as usual; but that fact did not make her action the more palatable to Emmy.  Emmy, who was older than Jenny by a mysterious period—­diminished by herself, but kept at its normal term of three years by Jenny, except in moments of some heat, when it grew for purposes of retort,—­was also less effective in many ways, such as in appearance and in adroitness; and Jenny comprised in herself, as it were, the good looks of the family.  Emmy was the housekeeper, who looked after Pa Blanchard; Jenny was the roving blade who augmented Pa’s pension by her own fluctuating wages.  That was another slight barrier between the sisters.  Nevertheless, Emmy was quite generous enough, and was long-suffering, so that her resentment took the general form of silences and secret broodings upon their different fortunes.  There was a great deal to be said about this difference, and the saying grew more and more remote from explicit utterance as thought of it ground into Emmy’s mind through long hours and days and weeks of solitude.  Pa could not hear anything besides the banging of pots, and he was too used to sudden noises to take any notice of such a thing; but the pots themselves, occasionally dented in savage dashes against each other or against the taps, might have heard vicious apostrophes if they