A woman’s voice bade him enter.  He stepped into a room which was not disorderly or unclean, but presented the chill discomfort of poverty.  The principal, almost the only, articles of furniture were a large bed, a washhand stand; a kitchen table, and two or three chairs, of which the cane seats were bulged and torn.  A few meaningless pictures hung here and there, and on the mantel-piece, which sloped forward somewhat, stood some paltry ornaments, secured m their places by a piece of string stretched in front of them.  The living occupants were four children and their mother.  Two little girls, six and seven years old respectively, were on the floor near the fire; a boy of four was playing with pieces of fire-wood at the table.  The remaining child was an infant, born but a fortnight ago, lying at its mother’s breast.  Mrs. Hewett sat on the bed, and bent forward in an attitude of physical weakness.  Her age was twenty-seven, but she looked several years older.  At nineteen she had married; her husband, John Hewett, having two children by a previous union.  Her face could never have been very attractive, but it was good-natured, and wore its pleasantest aspect as she smiled on Sidney’s entrance.  You would have classed her at once with those feeble-willed, weak-minded, yet kindly-disposed women, who are only too ready to meet affliction half-way, and who, if circumstances be calamitous, are more harmful than an enemy to those they hold dear.  She was rather wrapped up than dressed, and her hair, thin and pale-coloured, was tied in a ragged knot.  She wore slippers, the upper parts of which still adhered to the soles only by miracle.  It looked very much as if the same relation subsisted between her frame and the life that informed it, for there was no blood in her cheeks, no lustre in her eye.  The baby at her bosom moaned in the act of sucking; one knew not how the poor woman could supply sustenance to another being.

The children were not dirty nor uncared for, but their clothing hung very loosely upon them; their flesh was unhealthy, their voices had an unnatural sound.

Sidney stepped up to the bed and gave his hand.

‘I’m so glad you’ve come before Clara,’ said Mrs. Hewett.  ’I hoped you would.  But she can’t be long, an’ I want to speak to you first.  It’s a bad night, isn’t it?  Yes, I feel it in my throat, and it goes right through my chest—­just ‘ere, look!  And I haven’t slep’ not a hour a night this last week; it makes me feel that low.  I want to get to the Orspital, if I can, in a day or two.’

‘But doesn’t the doctor come still?’ asked Sidney, drawing a chair near to her.

‘Well, I didn’t think it was right to go on payin’ him, an’ that’s the truth.  I’ll go to the Orspital, an’ they’ll give me somethin’.  I look bad, don’t I, Sidney?’

‘You look as if you’d no business to be out of bed,’ returned the young man in a grumbling voice.