It was long since he had lost his place of porter at the filter-works.  Before leaving England, Joseph Snowdon managed to dispose of his interest in the firm of Lake, Snowdon, & Co., and at the same time Hewett was informed that his wages would be reduced by five shillings a week—­the sum which had been supplied by Michael Snowdon’s benevolence.  It was a serious loss.  Clara’s marriage removed one grave anxiety, but the three children had still to be brought up, and with every year John’s chance of steady employment would grow less.  Sidney Kirkwood declared himself able and willing to help substantially, but he might before long have children of his own to think of, and in any case it was Shameful to burden him in this way.

Shameful or not, it very soon came to pass that Sidney had the whole family on his hands.  A bad attack of rheumatism in the succeeding winter made John incapable of earning any. thing at all; for two months he was a cripple.  Till then Sidney and his wife had occupied lodgings in Holloway; when it became evident that Hewett must not hope to be able to support his children, and when Sidney had for many weeks p aid the rent (as well as supplying the money to live upon) in Farringdon Road Buildings, the house at Crouch End was taken, and there all went to live together.  Clara’s health was very uncertain, and though at first she spoke frequently of finding work to do at home, the birth of a child put an end to such projects.  Amy Hewett was shortly at the point when the education of a board-school child is said to be ‘finished;’ by good luck, employment was found for her in Kentish Town, with three shillings a week from the first.  John could not resign himself to being a mere burden on the home.  Enforced idleness so fretted him that at times he seemed all but out of his wits.  In despair he caught at the strangest kinds of casual occupation; when earning nothing, he would barely eat enough to keep himself alive, and if he succeeded in bringing home a shilling or two, he turned the money about in his hands with a sort of angry joy that it would have made your heart ache to witness.  Just at present he had a job of cleaning and whitewashing some cellars in Stoke Newington.

He was absent from the kitchen for five minutes, during which time the three sat round the table.  Amy pretended to eat unconcernedly; Tom made grimaces at her.  As for Annie, she cried.  Their father entered the room again.

‘Why didn’t you tell us about this at once?’ he asked, in a shaking voice, looking at his daughter with eyes of blank misery.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re a bad, selfish girl!’ he broke out, again overcome with anger.  ‘Haven’t you got neither sense nor feelin’ nor honesty?  Just when you ought to have begun to earn a bit higher wages—­when you ought to have been glad to work your hardest, to show you wasn’t unthankful to them as has done so much for you!  Who earned money to keep you when you was goin’ to school?  Who fed and clothed you, and saw as you didn’t want for nothing?  Who is it as you owe everything to?—­just tell me that.’