and the boy's nervousness rousing the mother
to exertion. They were interesting people--so lonely, apparently so
unfit to 'rough it' in the world; the mother so gentle in temper, and
the son so frail in constitution--two people who ought to have been
protected from all ill and all cares, yet who had such a bitter cup to
empty, such a harsh fate to fulfil.

They were very poor. The mother used to go out with a small basket on
her arm, which could hold but scanty supplies for two full-grown
people. Yet this was the only store they had; for no baker, no
butcher, no milkman, grocer, or poulterer, ever stopped at the area
gate of Miss Rebecca Spong; no purveyor of higher grade than a
cat's-meat-man was ever seen to hand provisions into the depths of
Number Nineteen's darkness. The old maid herself was poor; and she,
too, used to do her marketing on the basket principle; carrying home,
generally at night, odd scraps from the open stalls in Tottenham
Court-Road, which she had picked up as bargains; and dividing equally
between herself and her fagged servant-of-all-work the wretched meal
which would not have been too ample for one. She therefore could not
help her lodgers, and they all scrambled on over the desolate places
of poverty as they best might. In general, tea, sugar, bread, a little
rice, a little coffee as a change, a scrap of butter which no cow that
ever yielded milk would have acknowledged--these were the usual items
of Mrs Lawson's marketing, on which she and her young son were to be
nourished. And on such poor fare as this was that pale boy expected to
become a hearty man? The mother could not, did not expect it. Else why
were the tears in her eyes so often as she returned? and why did she
hang over her son, and caress him fondly, as if in deprecation, when
she brought him his wretched meal, seeming to lament, to blame
herself, too, that she had not been able to provide him anything
better? Poor things! poor things!

Mrs Lawson seemed at last to get some employment. She had been seeking
for it long--to judge by her frequent absences from home, and the
weary look of disappointment she wore when she returned. But at last
the opening was found, and she set to work in earnest. She used to go
out early in the morning, and not return until late in the evening,
and then she looked pale and tired, as one whose energies had been
overtasked all the day; but she had found no gold-mine. The scanty
meals were even scantie