Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/282

272 ‘You’ll come to no good end, my lady!’ She was a fierce an’ bad ’un.”

Sidney nodded, and went off for his walk with Amy

It was a difficult thing to keep any room in the house orderly, and Sidney, as part of his struggle against the downward tendency in all about him, against the forces of chaos, often did the work of housemaid in the parlour; a little laxity in the rules which made this a sacred corner, and there would have been no spot where he could rest. With some success, too, he had resisted the habit prevalent in workingclass homes of prolonging Saturday evening’s occupations until the early hours of Sunday morning. At a little after ten o’clock to-night John Hewett and the children were in bed; he too, weary in mind and body, would gladly have gone upstairs, but he lingered from one five minutes to the next, his heart sinking at the certainty that he would find Clara in sleepless misery which he had no power to allay.

Round the walls of the parlour were hung his own drawings, which used to conceal the bareness of his lodging in Tysoe Street. It was