 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
considerably 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
