An interesting house, this in which Mrs. Candy resided.  It contained in all seven rooms, and each room was the home of a family; under the roof slept twenty-five persons, men, women, and children; the lowest rent paid by one of these domestic groups was four-and-sixpence.  You would have enjoyed a peep into the rear chamber on the ground floor.  There dwelt a family named Hope—­Mr. and Mrs. Hope, Sarah Hope, aged fifteen, Dick Hope, aged twelve, Betsy Hope, aged three.  The father was a cripple; he and his wife occupied themselves in the picking of rags—­of course at home—­ and I can assure you that the atmosphere of their abode was worthy of its aspect.  Mr. Hope drank, but not desperately.  His forte was the use of language so peculiarly violent that even in Shooter’s Gardens it gained him a proud reputation.  On the slightest excuse he would threaten to brain one of his children, to disembowel another, to gouge out the eyes of the third.  He showed much ingenuity in varying the forms of menaced punishment.  Not a child in the Gardens but was constantly threatened by its parents with a violent death; this was so familiar that it had lost its effect; where the nurse or mother in the upper world cries, ‘I shall scold you!’ in the nether the phrase is, ’I’ll knock yer ‘ed orff!’ To ’I shall be very angry with you’ in the one sphere, corresponds in the other, ’I’ll murder you!’ These are conventions—­matters of no importance.  But Mr. Rope was a man of individuality; he could make his family tremble; he could bring lodgers about the door to listen and admire his resources.

In another room abode a mother with four children.  This woman drank moderately, but was very conscientious in despatching her three younger children to school.  True, there was just a little inconvenience in this punctuality of hers, at all events from the youngsters’ point of view, for only on the first three days of the week had they the slightest chance of a mouthful of breakfast before they departed.  ‘Never mind, I’ll have some dinner for you,’ their parent was wont to say.  Common enough in the Board schools, this pursuit of knowledge on an empty stomach.  But then the end is so inestimable!

Yet another home.  It was tenanted by two persons only; they appeared to be man and wife, but in the legal sense were not so, nor did they for a moment seek to deceive their neighbours.  With the female you are slightly acquainted; christened Sukey Jollop, she first became Mrs. Jack Bartley, and now, for courtesy’s sake, was styled Mrs. Higgs.  Sukey had strayed on to a downward path; conscious of it, she abandoned herself to her taste for strong drink, and braved out her degradation.  Jealousy of Clem Peckover was the first cause of discord between her and Jack Bartley; a robust young woman, she finally sent Jack about his business by literal force of arms, and entered into an alliance with Ned Higgs, a notorious swashbuckler, the captain of a gang of young ruffians who at this date were giving much trouble to the Clerkenwell police.  Their speciality was the skilful use, as an offensive weapon, of a stout leathern belt heavily buckled; Mr. Higgs boasted that with one stroke of his belt he could, if it seemed good to him, kill his man, but the fitting opportunity for this display of prowess had not yet offered. . . .