ill their panelling.
These were thickly inhabited. One family lived in each room, and in the
daytime there was the incessant noise of children playing in the court.
The old walls were the breeding-place of vermin; the air was so foul that
often, feeling sick, Philip had to light his pipe. The people who dwelt
here lived from hand to mouth. Babies were unwelcome, the man received
them with surly anger, the mother with despair; it was one more mouth to
feed, and there was little enough wherewith to feed those already there.
Philip often discerned the wish that the child might be born dead or might
die quickly. He delivered one woman of twins (a source of humour to the
facetious) and when she was told she burst into a long, shrill wail of
misery. Her mother said outright:

"I don't know how they're going to feed 'em."

"Maybe the Lord'll see fit to take 'em to 'imself," said the midwife.

Philip caught sight of the husband's face as he looked at the tiny pair
lying side by side, and there was a ferocious sullenness in it which
startled him. He felt in the family assembled there a hideous resentment
against those poor atoms who had come into the world unwished for; and he
had a suspicion that if he did not speak firmly an 'accident' would occur.
Accidents occurred often; mothers 'overlay' their babies, and perhaps
errors of diet were not always the result of carelessness.

"I shall come every day," he said. "I warn you that if anything happens to
them there'll have to be an inquest."

The father made no reply, but he gave Philip a scowl. There was murder in
his soul.

"Bless their little 'earts," said the grandmother, "what should 'appen to
them?"

The great difficulty was to keep the mothers in bed for ten days, which
was the minimum upon which the hospital practice insisted. It was awkward
to look after the family, no one would see to the children without
payment, and the husband tumbled because his tea was not right when he
came home tired from his work and hungry. Philip had heard that the poor
helped one another, but woman after woman complained to him that she could
not get anyone in to clean up and see to the children's dinner without
paying for the service, and she could not afford to pay. By listening to
the women as they talked and by chance remarks from which he could deduce
much that was left unsaid, Philip learned how little there was in common
between the poor and the classes above them. They did not en