Through summer months the Morgans had suffered sufficiently from the defects of their house; with the coming on of winter, they found themselves exposed to miseries barely endurable.  At the first slight frost, cistern and water-pipes went to ruin; already so damp that unlovely vegetation had cropped up on cellar walls, the edifice was now drenched with torrents of water.  Plaster fell from the ceilings; paper peeled away down the staircase; stuccoed portions of the front began to crack and moulder.  Not a door that would close as a door should; not a window that would open in the way expected of it; not a fireplace but discharged its smoke into the room, rather than by the approved channel.  Everywhere piercing draughts, which often entered by orifices unexplained and unexplainable.  From cellar floor to chimney-pot, no square inch of honest or trustworthy workmanship.  So thin were the parti-walls that conversation not only might, but must, be distinctly heard from room to room, and from house to house; the Morgans learnt to subdue their voices, lest all they said should become common property of the neighbourhood.  For the privilege of occupying such a residence, ‘the interior,’ said advertisement, ‘handsomely decorated,’ they were racked with an expenditure which, away in the sweet-scented country, would have housed them amid garden graces and orchard fruitfulness.

At this time, Mr. Morgan had joined an acquaintance in the establishment of a debt-collecting agency; his partner provided the modest capital needful for such an enterprise, and upon himself fell the disagreeable work.  A man of mild temper and humane instincts, he spent his day in hunting people who would not or could not pay the money they owed, straining his wits to circumvent the fraudulent, and swooping relentlessly upon the victims of misfortune.  The occupation revolted him, but at present he saw no other way of supporting the genteel appearances which—­he knew not why—­were indispensable to his life.  He subsisted like a bird of prey; he was ever on the look out for carrion which the law permitted him to seize.  From the point of view forced upon him, society became a mere system of legalised rapine.  ’You are in debt; behold the bond.  Behold, too, my authority for squeezing out of you the uttermost farthing.  You must beg or starve?  I deplore it, but I, for my part, have a genteel family to maintain on what I rend from your grip.’  He set his forehead against shame; he stooped to the basest chicanery; he exposed himself to insult, to curses, to threats of violence.  Sometimes a whole day of inconceivably sordid toil resulted in the pouching of a few pence; sometimes his reward was a substantial sum.  He knew himself despised by many of the creditors who employed him.  ‘Bad debts?  For how much will you sell them to me?’ And as often as not he took away with his bargain a glance which was equivalent to a kick.