at his income happened to be, the amount necessary to obtain
these articles was rigidly deducted, and as certainly expended. Without
his beer, Claire really imagined that he would not have strength
sufficient to go through with his weekly toil--how his wife managed to
get along without even her regular cup of good tea, it had never
occurred to him to ask--and not to have had a pipe to smoke in the
evening, or after each meal, would have been a deprivation beyond his
ability to endure. So, the two or three shillings went regularly in the
old way. When the six-pences and pennies congregated in goodly numbers
in the shoemaker's pocket, his visits to the ale-house were often
repeated, and his extra pipe smoked more frequently. But, as his
allowance for the week diminished, and it required some searching in
the capacious pockets, where they hid themselves away, to find the
straggling coins, Claire found it necessary to put some check upon his
appetite. And so it went on, week after week and month after month. The
beer was drunk, and the pipe smoked as usual, while the whole family
bent under the weight of poverty that was laid upon them.

Weaker and weaker grew little Lizzy. From the coarse food that was
daily set before her, her weak stomach turned, and she hardly took
sufficient nourishment to keep life in her attenuated frame.

"Poor child!" said the mother one morning, "she cannot live if she
doesn't eat. But coarse bread and potatoes and buttermilk go against
her weak stomach. Ah me! If we only had a little that the rich waste."

"There is a curse in poverty!" replied Claire, with a bitterness that
was unusual to him, as he turned his eyes upon his child, who had
pushed away the food that had been placed before her, and was looking
at it with an expression of disappointment on her wan face. "A curse in
poverty!" he repeated. "Why should my child die for want of nourishing
food, while the children of the rich have every luxury?"

In the mind of Claire, there was usually a dead calm. He plodded on,
from day to day, eating his potatoes and buttermilk, or whatever came
before him, and working steadily through the hours allotted to labour,
his hopes or fears in life rarely exciting him to an expression of
discontent. But he loved Lizzy better than any earthly thing, and to
see her turn with loathing from her coarse food, the best he was able
to procure for her, aroused his sluggish nature into rebellion against
his lot. B