Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/269

 home a shilling or two, he turned the money about in his hands with a sort of angry joy that it would have made your heart ache to witness. Just at present he had a job of cleaning and whitewashing some cellars in Stoke Newington.

He was absent from the kitchen for five minutes, during which time the three sat round the table. Amy pretended to eat unconcernedly; Tom made grimaces at her. As for Annie, she cried. Their father entered the room again.

“Why didn’t you tell us about this at once?” he asked, in a shaking voice, looking at his daughter with eyes of blank misery.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re a bad, selfish girl!” he broke out, again overcome with anger. “Haven’t you got neither sense nor feelin’ nor honesty? Just when you ought to have begun to earn a bit higher wages,—when you ought to have been glad to work your hardest, to show you wasn’t unthankful to them as has done so much for you! Who earned money to keep you when you was goin’ to school? Who fed and clothed you, and saw as you didn’t want