en and well furnished.
Maggie, the wife, could have good food, such as she needed in her
constant ailing, alas! The baby just born was no longer a cause of
anxious thought, but a joy in the home. And Sidney Kirkwood came to
supper as soon as the new rooms were in order, and his bright, manly
face did everyone good to look at. He still took little Clara upon his
knee. Ha! there would come a day before long when he would not venture
to do that, and then perhaps--perhaps! What a supper that was, and how
smoothly went the great wheels of the world that evening!

One baby, two babies, three babies; before the birth of the third,
John's brow was again clouded, again he had begun to rail and fume at
the unfitness of things. His business was a failure, partly because he
dealt with a too rigid honesty, partly because of his unstable nature,
which left him at the mercy of whims and obstinacies and airy projects.
He did not risk the ordinary kind of bankruptcy, but came down and
down, until at length he was the only workman in his own shop; then the
shop itself had to be abandoned; then he was searching for someone who
would employ him.

Bob had been put to the die-sinker's craft; Clara was still going to
school, and had no thought of earning a livelihood--ominous state of
things, When it shortly became 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 receiv