Bob had been put to the die-sinker’s craft; Clara was still going to school, and had no thought of earning a livelihood—­ominous state of things, When it shortly became clear even to John Hewett that he would wrong the girl if he did not provide her with some means of supporting herself, she was sent to learn ‘stamping’ with the same employer for whom her brother worked.  The work was light; it would soon bring in a little money.  John declared with fierceness that his daughter should never be set to the usual needle-slavery, and indeed it seemed very unlikely that Clara would ever be fit for that employment, as she could not do the simplest kind of sewing.  In the meantime the family kept changing their abode, till at length they settled in Mrs. Peckover’s house.  All the best of their furniture was by this time sold; but for the two eldest children, there would probably have been no home at all.  Bob, aged nineteen, earned at this present time a pound weekly; his sister, an average of thirteen shillings.  Mrs. Hewett’s constant ill-health (the result, doubtless, of semi-starvation through the years of her girlhood), would have excused defects of housekeeping; but indeed the poor woman was under any circumstances incapable of domestic management, and therein represented her class.  The money she received was wasted in comparison with what might have been done with it.  I suppose she must not be blamed for bringing children into the world when those already born to her were but half-clothed, half-fed; she increased the sum total of the world’s misery in obedience to the laws of the Book of Genesis.  And one virtue she had which compensated for all that was lacking—­a virtue merely negative among the refined, but in that other world the rarest and most precious of moral distinctions—­she resisted the temptations of the public-house.

This was the story present in Sidney Kirkwood’s mind as often as he climbed the staircase in Clerkenwell Close.  By contrast, his own life seemed one of unbroken ease.  Outwardly it was smooth enough.  He had no liking for his craft, and being always employed upon the meaningless work which is demanded by the rich vulgar, he felt such work to be paltry and ignoble; but there seemed no hope of obtaining better. and he made no audible complaint.  His wages were consider ably more than he needed, and systematically he put money aside each week.

But this orderly existence concealed conflicts of heart and mind which Sidney himself could not have explained, could not lucidly have described.  The moral shock which he experienced at his father’s death put an end to the wanton play of his energies, but it could not ripen him before due time; his nature was not of the sterile order common in his world, and through passion, through conflict, through endurance, it had to develop such maturity as fate should permit.  Saved from self-indulgence, he naturally turned into the way of political enthusiasm; thither did his temper point him.  With some help—­mostly negative—­from Clerkenwell Green, he reached the stage of confident and aspiring Radicalism, believing in the perfectibility of man, in human brotherhood, in—­anything you like that is the outcome of a noble heart sheltered by ignorance.  It had its turn, and passed.