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.
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