gossiped with her neighbours; the
children read books surreptitiously or played at blindman's buff;
elegant dandies diverted the elder girl who was in the employment of the
milliner, and it will be better to say nothing at all about the arduous
artistic labours of the chorus-singer. The family only met together at
dinner-time, and then they would sit round the table with sour,
ill-tempered faces, the younger ones grumbling and whining at the meagre
food, the elder girls with their appetites spoilt by a surfeit of
sweetmeats, every one moody and bored, as if they found each other's
company intolerable, and all of them eagerly awaiting the moment when
they might return to their engrossing pursuits again.

There are certain happy-minded people who never will believe what they
don't like. They won't believe that any one is angry with them until he
actually treads on their corns; they fail to observe whether their
acquaintances snub them in the street; they never notice any change,
however nearly it concerns them, even if it be in the bosom of their
families, unless somebody calls their attention to it; and they will
rather invent all sorts of excuses for the most glaring faults than put
themselves to the trouble of trying to correct them.

Providence, as a rule, endows those people who have to live by their
labour with a beneficial instinct, which makes them find their pride and
joy in the work they have accomplished. When the whole family meets
together in the evening, each member boasts of how much he has done in
the course of the day; and how good it is that it should be so! Now, the
Meyers lacked this instinct. The curse of the expulsion from Paradise
seemed to rest upon _their_ labours. None of them ever boasted of having
made any progress. None of them ever inquired how the others had been
getting on. All of them were very chary how they opened a conversation,
as if they feared it would be made a grievance of; and is there anything
in the world so dreadful as a family grievance!

And grievances there are which speak even when they are dumb. Indoors,
every member of the family began to wear rags, and this is what every
family must come to that can only look nice in new clothes. Such people,
unless they are able to sit before the mirror all day long, look
draggle-tailed and sluttish, even if the clothes that hang about them
are not very old, and so betray their poverty to the world. The girls
were obliged to get out