en the excellent Axminster carpet which
covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat
forward, staring into the dull, small fire. In fact, that arm-chair
had been an extravagance of Mrs. Bunting. She had wanted her husband
to be comfortable after the day's work was done, and she had paid
thirty-seven shillings for the chair. Only yesterday Bunting had
tried to find a purchaser for it, but the man who had come to look at
it, guessing their cruel necessities, had only offered them twelve
shillings and sixpence for it; so for the present they were keeping
their arm-chair.

But man and woman want something more than mere material comfort,
much as that is valued by the Buntings of this world. So, on the
walls of the sitting-room, hung neatly framed if now rather faded
photographs--photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting's various former
employers, and of the pretty country houses in which they had
separately lived during the long years they had spent in a not
unhappy servitude.

But appearances were not only deceitful, they were more than
usually deceitful with regard to these unfortunate people. In
spite of their good furniture--that substantial outward sign of
respectability which is the last thing which wise folk who fall
into trouble try to dispose of--they were almost at the end of
their tether. Already they had learnt to go hungry, and they were
beginning to learn to go cold. Tobacco, the last thing the sober
man foregoes among his comforts, had been given up some time ago
by Bunting. And even Mrs. Bunting--prim, prudent, careful woman
as she was in her way--had realised what this must mean to him.
So well, indeed, had she understood that some days back she had
crept out and bought him a packet of Virginia.

Bunting had been touched--touched as he had not been for years by
any woman's thought and love for him. Painful tears had forced
themselves into his eyes, and husband and wife had both felt in
their odd, unemotional way, moved to the heart.

Fortunately he never guessed--how could he have guessed, with his
slow, normal, rather dull mind?--that his poor Ellen had since
more than once bitterly regretted that fourpence-ha'penny, for they
were now very near the soundless depths which divide those who dwell
on the safe tableland of security--those, that is, who are sure of
making a respectable, if not a happy, living--and the submerged
multitude who, through some lack in themselves, or owing to