‘Have you been to see Corder again?’ asked Sidney, after reflecting anxiously.

‘No, I haven’t!’ was the angry reply; ‘an’ what’s more, I ain’t goin’ to!  He’s one o’ them men I can’t get on with.  As long as you make yourself small before him, an’ say “sir” to him with every other word, an’ keep tellin’ him as he’s your Providence on earth, an’ as you don’t know how ever you’d get on without him—­well, it’s all square, an’ he’ll keep you on the job.  That’s just what I can’t do—­never could, an’ never shall.  I should have to hear them children cryin’ for food before I could do it.  So don’t speak to me about Corder again.  It makes me wild!’

Sidney tapped the floor with his foot.  Himself a single man, without responsibilities, always in fairly good work, he could not invariably sympathise with Hewett’s sore and impracticable pride.  His own temper did not err in the direction of meekness, but as he looked round the room he felt that a home such as this would drive him to any degree of humiliation.  John knew what the young man’s thoughts were; he resumed in a voice of exasperated bitterness.

’No, I haven’t been to Corder—­I beg his pardon; Mister Corder—­James Corder, Esquire.  But where do you think I went this mornin’?  Mrs. Peckover brought up a paper an’ showed me an advertisement.  Gorbutt in Goswell Bead wanted a man to clean windows an’ sweep up, an’ so on;—­offered fifteen bob a week.  Well, I went.  Didn’t I, mother?  Didn’t I go after that job?  I got there at half-past eight; an’ what do you think I found?  If there was one man standin’ at Gorbutt’s door, there was five hundred!  Don’t you believe me?  You go an’ ask them as lives about there.  If there was one, there was five hundred!  Why, the p’lice had to come an’ keep the road clear.  Fifteen bob What was the use o’ me standin’ there, outside the crowd?  What was the use, I say?  Such a lot o’ poor starvin’ devils you never saw brought together in all your life.  There they was, lookin’ ready to fight with one another for the fifteen bob a week.  Didn’t I come back and tell you about it, mother?  An’ if they’d all felt like me, they’d a turned against the shop an’ smashed it up—­ay, an’ every other shop in the street!  What use?  Why, no use; but I tell you that’s how I felt.  If any man had said as much as a rough word to me, I’d a gone at him like a bulldog.  I felt like a beast.  I wanted to fight, I tell you—­to fight till the life was kicked an’ throttled out of me!’

‘John, don’t, don’t go on in that way,’ cried his wife, sobbing miserably.  ‘Don’t let him go on like that, Sidney.’

Hewett jumped up and walked about.

‘What’s the time?’ he asked the next moment.  And when Sidney told him that it was half-past nine, he exclaimed, ’Then why hasn’t Clara come ‘ome?  What’s gone with her?’

‘Perhaps she’s at Mrs. Tubbs’s,’ replied his wife, in a low voice, looking at Kirkwood.