Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/188

180 We should have gone to the river if I'd come back last night without any food or money."

"I'm sorry to hear it was as bad as that," I said.

"We couldn't have stood the boy's crying for food any longer. He's quite different to-day. He actually wanted to play—the little beggar." And he tried to laugh, but failed dismally.

"Sit down and tell me more about it," I said. "But you'd like a drink, wouldn't you?"

"No, thank you. I never drink in the morning."

I was pleased to find that his troubles had not driven him to that refuge.

It was a long, unhappy tale he told me of the painful struggle to get poorly paid work, and of losing it when he got it; of sinking through stage after stage of poverty to the bitterest want. I gathered that now and again, for weeks at a time, he and his wife had gone short of food, and at last the child had gone short, too. The memory of their sufferings stirred him at times to a kind of furious anguish.

When at last he came to the end of his tale, I said thoughtfully:

"I wonder you weren't driven to do away with your horrible stepmother. Your wife and child would have had the money, and with seven thousand a year all the world would have been eager