'd have shuddered as much as I did. There they remained all
the time: the children ate a morsel of bread once or twice, and I gave
'em best part of the dinners my missis brought me, but the woman ate
nothing; they never even laid on the bedstead, nor was the room swept or
cleaned all the time. The neighbours were all too poor themselves to
take any notice of 'em, but from what I could make out from the abuse of
the woman up-stairs, it seemed the husband had been transported a few
weeks before. When the time was up, the landlord and old Fixem too, got
rather frightened about the family, and so they made a stir about it, and
had 'em taken to the workhouse. They sent the sick couch for the old
'ooman, and Simmons took the children away at night. The old 'ooman went
into the infirmary, and very soon died. The children are all in the
house to this day, and very comfortable they are in comparison. As to
the mother, there was no taming her at all. She had been a quiet,
hard-working woman, I believe, but her misery had actually drove her
wild; so after she had been sent to the house of correction half-a-dozen
times, for throwing inkstands at the overseers, blaspheming the
churchwardens, and smashing everybody as come near her, she burst a
blood-vessel one mornin', and died too; and a happy release it was, both
for herself and the old paupers, male and female, which she used to tip
over in all directions, as if they were so many skittles, and she the
ball.

'Now this was bad enough,' resumed Mr. Bung, taking a half-step towards
the door, as if to intimate that he had nearly concluded. 'This was bad
enough, but there was a sort of quiet misery--if you understand what I
mean by that, sir--about a lady at one house I was put into, as touched
me a good deal more. It doesn't matter where it was exactly: indeed, I'd
rather not say, but it was the same sort o' job. I went with Fixem in
the usual way--there was a year's rent in arrear; a very small
servant-girl opened the door, and three or four fine-looking little
children was in the front parlour we were shown into, which was very
clean, but very scantily furnished, much like the children themselves.
"Bung," says Fixem to me, in a low voice, when we were left alone for a
minute, "I know something about this here family, and my opinion is, it's
no go." "Do you think they can't settle?" says I, quite anxiously; for I
liked the looks of them children. Fixem shook his head, an