but insensible
with fatigue. Entering the room, he turned his white face with an
expression of stupid wonderment to the corner in which Bob lay. The
latter raised himself to a sitting posture.

'That you, Bob Hewett?'

'I want to stop here over the night,' replied the other, speaking with
difficulty. 'I can't go home. There's something up.'

'With Pennyloaf?'

'No. I've got to hide away. And I'm feeling bad--awful bad. Have you
got anything to drink?'

Stephen, having listened with a face of a somnambulist, went to the
mantel-piece and looked into the teapot. It was empty.

'You can go to the tap in the yard,' he said.

'I couldn't get so far. Oh, I feel bad!'

'I'll fetch you some water.'

A good-hearted animal, this poor Stephen; a very tolerable human being,
had he had fair-play. He would not abandon his wretched mother, though
to continue living with her meant hunger and cold and yet worse evils.
For himself, his life was supported chiefly on the three pints of
liquor which he was allowed every day. His arms and legs were those of
a living skeleton; his poor idiotic face was made yet more repulsive by
disease. Yet you could have seen that he was the brother of Pennyloaf;
there was Pennyloaf's submissive beast-of-burden look in his eyes, and
his voice had something that reminded one of hers.

'The coppers after you?' he whispered, stooping down to Bob with the
teacup he had filled with water.

Bob nodded, then drained the cup eagerly.

'I get knocked down by a cab or something,' he added. 'It hit me just
here. I may feel better when I've rested a bit. 'Haven't you got no
furniture left?'

'They took it last Saturday was a week. Took it for rent. I thought we
didn't owe nothing, but mother told me she'd paid when she hadn't. I
got leave to stop, when I showed 'em as I could pay in future; but they
wouldn't trust me to make up them three weeks. They took the furniture.
It's 'ard, I call it. I asked my guvnor if it was law for them to take
mother's bed-things, an' he said yes it was. When it's for rent they
can take everything, even to your beddin' an' tools.'

Yes; they can take everything. How foolish of Stephen Candy and his
tribe not to be born of the class of landlords! The inconvenience of
having no foothold on the earth's surface is so manifest.

'I couldn't say nothing to her,' he continued, nodding towards the
prostrate woman. 'She was sorry for it, an' you can't ask no more. It
was my fault