asked suddenly.
    »No.«
    »There's something I wanted to tell you. You can have Jane Snowdon here
again, if you like.«
    »I can? Really?«
    »You may as well make use of her. That'll do; shut up and go to sleep.«
    In the morning Pennyloaf was obliged to ask for money; she wished to take
the child to the hospital again, and as the weather was very bad she would have
to pay an omnibus fare. Bob growled at the demand, as was nowadays his custom.
Since he had found a way of keeping his own pocket tolerably well supplied from
time to time, he was becoming so penurious at home that Pennyloaf had to beg for
what she needed copper by copper. Excepting breakfast, he seldom took a meal
with her. The easy good-nature which in the beginning made him an indulgent
husband had turned in other directions since his marriage was grown a weariness
to him. He did not, in truth, spend much upon himself, but in his leisure time
was always surrounded by companions whom he had a pleasure in treating with the
generosity of the public-house. A word of flattery was always sure of payment if
Bob had a coin in his pocket. Ever hungry for admiration, for prominence, he
found new opportunities of gratifying his taste now that he had a resource when
his wages ran out. So far from becoming freer-handed again with his wife and
children, he grudged every coin that he was obliged to expend on them.
Pennyloaf's submissiveness encouraged him in this habit; where other wives would
have made a row, she yielded at once to his grumbling and made shift with the
paltriest allowance. You should have seen the kind of diet on which she
habitually lived. Like all the women of her class, utterly ignorant and helpless
in the matter of preparing food, she abandoned the attempt to cook anything, and
expended her few pence daily on whatever happened to tempt her in a shop, when
meal-time came round. In the present state of her health she often suffered from
a morbid appetite and fed on things of incredible unwholesomeness. Thus, there
was a kind of cake exposed in a window in Rosoman Street, two layers of pastry
with half an inch of something like very coarse mincemeat between; it cost a
halfpenny a square, and not seldom she ate four, or even six, of these squares,
as heavy as lead, making this her dinner. A cookshop within her range exhibited
at midday great dough-puddings, kept hot