Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. I, 1889.djvu/208

 wholesome reproof. Her father was not without a share in the responsibility for it all. Entering upon his four hundred pounds, one of the first things John did was to hire a piano, that his child might be taught to play. Pity that Sidney Kirkwood could not then cry with effective emphasis, "We are the working classes! we are the lower orders!" It was exactly what Hewett would not bring himself to understand. What! His Clara must be robbed of chances just because her birth was not that of a young lady? Nay, by all the unintelligible Powers, she should enjoy every help that he could possibly afford her. Bless her bright face and her clever tongue! Yes, it was now a settled thing that she should be trained for a school-teacher. An atmosphere of refinement must be made for her; she must be better dressed, more delicately fed.

The bitter injustice of it! In the outcome you are already instructed. Long before Clara was anything like ready to enter upon a teacher's career, her father's ill-luck once