‘You’ve been very unlucky, indeed, Mr Glegg,’ said Harker.  ’But you know, if we lay out money, we shall look for a return.  We must raise your rent.’

‘Ah, sir, I suppose so,’ answered John with a sigh; ’and how we’re to pay it, I don’t know.  If I could only get well, I shouldn’t mind; for I’d rather break stones on the road, or sweep a crossing, than see my poor girl slaving from morning to night for such a pittance.’

‘If we were to throw down this partition, and open another window here,’ said Harker to Mr Benjamin, ’it would make a comfortable apartment of it.  There would be room, then, for a bed in the recess.’

Mr Benjamin, however, was at that moment engaged in the contemplation of an ill-painted portrait of a girl, that was attached by a pin over the chimney-piece.  It was without a frame, for the respectable gilt one that had formerly encircled it, had been taken off, and sold to buy bread.  Nothing could be coarser than the execution of the thing, but as is not unfrequently the case with such productions, the likeness was striking; and Mr Benjamin, being now in the habit of seeing Mary, who bought all the meal they used at his shop, recognised it at once.

‘That’s your daughter, is it?’ he said.

’Yes, sir; she’s often at your place for meal; and if it wasn’t too great a liberty, I would ask you, sir, if you thought you could help her to some sort of employment that’s better than sewing; for it’s a hard life, sir, in this close place for a young creature that was brought up in the free country air:  not that Mary minds work, but the worst is, there’s so little to be got by the needle, and it’s such close confinement.’

Mr Benjamin’s mind, during this address of poor Glegg’s, was running on his guinea.  He felt a distrust of her honesty—­or rather of the honesty of both father and daughter; and yet being far from a hard-hearted person, their evident distress and the man’s sickness disposed him to make allowance for them.  ’They couldn’t know that the money belonged to me,’ thought he; adding aloud:  ‘Have you no friends here in London?’

’No, sir, none.  I was unfortunate in business in the country, and came here hoping for better luck; but sickness overtook us, and we’ve never been able to do any good.  But, Mary, my daughter, doesn’t want for education, sir; and a more honest girl never lived!’

‘Honest, is she?’ said Mr Benjamin, looking Glegg in the face.

‘I’ll answer for her, sir,’ answered John, who thought the old gentleman was going to assist her to a situation.  ’You’ll excuse me mentioning it, sir; but perhaps it isn’t everybody, distressed as we were, that would have carried back that money she found in the meal:  but Mary would do it, even when I said that perhaps it wasn’t yours, and that nobody might know whose it was; which was very wrong of me, no doubt; but one’s mind gets weakened by illness and want, and I couldn’t help thinking of the food it would buy us; but Mary wouldn’t hear of it.  I’m sure you might trust Mary with untold gold, sir; and it would be a real charity to help her to a situation, if you knew of such a thing.’