Mary Scott was
there, her long apron damp with soap-suds and her cheeks red with
exertion, for she had just come from bathing twelve youngsters, who,
not being used to the ordeal, had given trouble. There were other of
his helpers too, a dozen of them up to their eyes in work, and a long
string of applicants patiently waiting their turn. The right sort
too--the sort from underneath--pale-faced, hollow-eyed, weary, yet for a
moment stirred from their lethargy of suffering at the prospect of some
passing relief. There was a young woman, hollow-cheeked, thin herself
as a lath, eager for work or chance of work for her husband--that
morning out of hospital, still too delicate to face the night air and
the hot room. He knew shorthand, could keep books, typewrite, a little
slip about his character, but that was all over and done with. A bank
clerk with L90 a year, obliged to wear a silk hat, who marries a
penniless girl on his summer holiday. They must live, both of them,
and the gold passed through his fingers day by day, an endless shower.
The magistrates had declined to sentence him, but the shame--and he was
never strong.
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