Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/212

202 look in his eyes, and his voice had something that reminded one of hers.

“The coppers after you?” he whispered, stooping down to Bob with the teacup he had filled with water.

Bob nodded, then drained the cup eagerly.

“I got knocked down by a cab or something,” he added. “It hit me just here. I may feel better when I’ve rested a bit. Haven’t you got no furniture left?”

“They took it last Saturday was a week. Took it for rent. I thought we didn’t owe nothing, but mother told me she’d paid when she hadn’t. I got leave to stop, when I showed ’em as I could pay in future; but they wouldn’t trust me to make up them three weeks. They took the furniture. It’s ’ard, I call it. I asked my guvnor if it was law for them to take mother’s bed-things, an’ he said yes it was. When it’s for rent they can take everything, even to your beddin’ an’ tools.”

Yes; they can take everything. How foolish of Stephen Candy and his tribe not to be born of the class of landlords! The inconvenience of having no foothold on the earth’s surface is so manifest.