done there--had they known it, and known Jones's
Alley, one or two of them, who were medical students, might probably
have objected. The landlady charged them just twice as much for
repairing their shirts as she paid the haggard woman, who, therefore,
being unable to buy the cuffs and collar-bands ready-made for sewing on,
had no lack of employment with which to fill in her spare time.

Therefore, she was a "respectable woman," and was known in Jones's Alley
as "Misses" Aspinall, and called so generally, and even by Mother Brock,
who kept "that place" opposite. There is implied a world of difference
between the "Mother" and the "Misses," as applied to matrons in Jones's
Alley; and this distinction was about the only thing--always excepting
the everlasting "children"--that the haggard woman had left to care
about, to take a selfish, narrow-minded sort of pleasure in--if, indeed,
she could yet take pleasure, grim or otherwise, in anything except,
perhaps, a good cup of tea and time to drink it in.

Times were hard with Mrs Aspinall. Two coppers and two half-pence in
her purse were threepence to her now, and the absence of one of the
half-pence made a difference to her, especially in Paddy's market--that
eloquent advertisement of a young city's sin and poverty and rotten
wealth--on Saturday night. She counted the coppers as anxiously and
nervously as a thirsty dead-beat does. And her house was "falling down
on her" and her troubles, and she couldn't get the landlord to do a
"han'stern" to it.

At last, after persistent agitation on her part (but not before a
portion of the plastered ceiling had fallen and severely injured one
of her children) the landlord caused two men to be sent to "effect
necessary repairs" to the three square, dingy, plastered holes--called
"three rooms and a kitchen"--for the privilege of living in which, and
calling it "my place," she paid ten shillings a week.

Previously the agent, as soon as he had received the rent and signed the
receipt, would cut short her reiterated complaints--which he privately
called her "clack"--by saying that he'd see to it, he'd speak to the
landlord; and, later on, that he _had_ spoken to him, or could do
nothing more in the matter--that it wasn't his business. Neither it was,
to do the agent justice. It was his business to collect the rent, and
thereby earn the means of paying his own. He had to keep a family on
his own account, by assisting the Fat Man to keep his