Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. II, 1889.djvu/141

 There was a man in our house who kept dogs, and I remember once catching hold of a bit of dirty meat—I can’t call it meat—that one of them had gnawed and left on the stairs; and I ate it, as if I’d been a dog myself, I was that driven with hunger. Why, I feel the cold and the hunger at this minute! It was a cruel winter, that, and it left me alone. I had to get my own living as best I could.

“No teaching. I was nineteen before I could read the signs over shops, or write my own name. Between nineteen and twenty I got all the education I ever was to have, paying a man with what I could save out of my earnings. The blessing was I had health and strength, and with hard struggling I got into a regular employment. At five-andtwenty I could earn my pound a week, pretty certain. When it got to five shillings more, I must needs have a wife to share it with me. My poor girl came to live with me in a room in Hill Street.

“I’ve never spoken to you of her, but you