So she told her stories to the humming of the machine, and when it was nearly the children’s bedtime she broke off to ask them if they would like some bread and butter.  Among all the results of her poverty the bitterest to Emma was when she found herself hoping that the children would not eat much.  If their appetite was poor it made her anxious about their health, yet it happened sometimes that she feared to ask them if they were hungry lest the supply of bread should fail.  It was so to-night.  The week’s earnings had been three shillings; the rent itself was four.  But the children were as ready to eat as if they had had no tea.  It went to her heart to give them each but one half-slice and tell them that they could have no more.  Gladly she would have robbed herself of breakfast next morning on their account, but that she durst not do, for she had undertaken to scrub out an office in Goswell Road, and she knew that her strength would fail if she went from home fasting.

She put them to bed—­they slept together on a small bedstead, which was a chair during the day—­and then sat down to do some patching at a dress of Kate’s.  Her face when she communed with her own thoughts was profoundly sad, but far from the weakness of self-pity.  Indeed she did her best not to think of herself; she knew that to do so cost her struggles with feelings she held to be evil, resentment and woe of passion and despair.  She tried to occupy herself solely with her sister and the children, planning how to make Kate more home-loving and how to find the little ones more food.

She had no companions.  The girls whom she came to know in the workroom for the most part took life very easily; she could not share in their genuine merriment; she was often revolted by their way of thinking and speaking.  They thought her dull; and paid no attention to her.  She was glad to be relieved of the necessity of talking.

Her sister thought her hard.  Kate believed that she was for ever brooding over her injury.  This was not true, but a certain hardness in her character there certainly was.  For her life, both of soul and body, was ascetic; she taught herself to expect, to hope for, nothing.  When she was hungry she had a sort of pleasure in enduring; when weary she worked on as if by effort she could overcome the feeling.  But Kate’s chief complaint against her was her determination to receive no help save in the way of opportunity to earn money.  This was something more than, ordinary pride.  Emma suffered intensely in the recollection that she had lived at Mutimer’s expense during the very months when he was seeking the love of another woman, and casting about for means of abandoning herself.  When she thought of Alice coming with the proposal that she and her sister should still occupy the house in Wilton Square, and still receive money, the heat of shame and anger never failed to rise to her cheeks.  She could never accept from anyone again a penny which she had not earned.  She believed that Daniel Dabbs had been repaid, otherwise she could not have rested a moment.