‘You can go to the tap in the yard,’ he said.

‘I couldn’t get so far.  Oh, I feel bad!’

‘I’ll fetch you some water.’

A good-hearted animal, this poor Stephen; a very tolerable human being, had he had fair-play.  He would not abandon his wretched mother, though to continue living with her meant hunger and cold and yet worse evils.  For himself, his life was supported chiefly on the three pints of liquor which he was allowed every day.  His arms and legs were those of a living skeleton; his poor idiotic face was made yet more repulsive by disease.  Yet you could have seen that he was the brother of Pennyloaf; there was Pennyloaf’s submissive beast-of-burden look in his eyes, and his voice had something that reminded one of hers.

‘The coppers after you?’ he whispered, stooping down to Bob with the teacup he had filled with water.

Bob nodded, then drained the cup eagerly.

‘I get knocked down by a cab or something,’ he added.  ’It hit me just here.  I may feel better when I’ve rested a bit.  ’Haven’t you got no furniture left?’

’They took it last Saturday was a week.  Took it for rent.  I thought we didn’t owe nothing, but mother told me she’d paid when she hadn’t.  I got leave to stop, when I showed ’em as I could pay in future; but they wouldn’t trust me to make up them three weeks.  They took the furniture.  It’s ’ard, I call it.  I asked my guvnor if it was law for them to take mother’s bed-things, an’ he said yes it was.  When it’s for rent they can take everything, even to your beddin’ an’ tools.’

Yes; they can take everything.  How foolish of Stephen Candy and his tribe not to be born of the class of landlords!  The inconvenience of having no foothold on the earth’s surface is so manifest.

‘I couldn’t say nothing to her,’ he continued, nodding towards the prostrate woman.  ‘She was sorry for it, an’ you can’t ask no more.  It was my fault for trustin’ her with the money to pay, but I get a bit careless now an’ then, an’ forgot.  You do look bad, Bob, an’ there’s no mistake.  Would you feel better if I lighted a bit o’ fire?’

‘Yes; I feel cold.  I was hot just now.’

‘You needn’t be afraid o’ the coals.  Mother goes round the streets after the coal-carts, an’ you wouldn’t believe what a lot she picks up some days.  You see, we’re neither of us in the ’ouse very often; we don’t burn much.’

He lit a fire, and Bob dragged himself near to it.  In the meantime the quietness of the house was suffering a disturbance familiar to its denizens.  Mr. Hope—­you remember Mr. Hope?—­had just returned from an evening at the public-house, and was bent on sustaining his reputation for unmatched vigour of language.  He was quarrelling with his wife and daughters; their high notes of vituperation mingled in the most effective way with his manly thunder.  To hear Mr. Hope’s expressions, a stranger would have imagined him on the very point of savagely murdering all his family.