Now and again, during intervals
of comparative calm, I was forced to put my head out of the window to
breathe the air of the street. Even that was tainted, for a fried-fish
shop across the way and a public-house next door billowed forth their
nauseating odours. After a while access to the window was denied me.
A mattress and some rude coverings were stretched beneath it--the
children's bed--on which we persuaded the helpless, dreary wife to lie
down and try to rest. A neighbour had taken in the children for the
night. The wife was a skinny, grey-faced, lined woman of six-and-twenty.
In her attitude of hopeless incompetence she shed around her an
atmosphere of unspeakable depression. Although I could not get to the
window, I was glad when she lay down and spared me the sight of
her moving fecklessly about the room or weeping huddled up on a
broken-backed wooden chair and looking more like a half-animated
dish-clout than a woman.
The poor wretch on the bed was a journeyman tailor who, when sober,
could earn fair wages.
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