beer upon the table, and helped His Royal Highness to half. But my
father and mother's tea was very weak that Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith
might have a glass of wine should they come to dinner. I remember the
one egg for breakfast, my mother arguing that my father should have it
because he had his business to attend to; my father insisting that my
mother should eat it, she having to go out shopping, a compromise
being effected by their dividing it between them, each clamouring for
the white as the most nourishing. And I know however little the meal
looked upon the table when we started I always rose well satisfied.
These are small things to speak of, but then you must bear in mind
this is a story moving in narrow ways.

To me this life came as a good time. That I was encouraged to eat
treacle in preference to butter seemed to me admirable. Personally, I
preferred sausages for dinner; and a supper of fried fish and
potatoes, brought in stealthily in a carpet bag, was infinitely more
enjoyable than the set meal where nothing was of interest till one
came to the dessert. What fun there was about it all! The cleaning
of the doorstep by night, when from the ill-lit street a gentleman
with a piece of sacking round his legs might very well pass for a
somewhat tall charwoman. I would keep watch at the gate to give
warning should any one looking like a possible late caller turn the
corner of the street, coming back now and then in answer to a low
whistle to help my father grope about in the dark for the hearthstone;
he was always mislaying the hearthstone. How much better, helping to
clean the knives or running errands than wasting all one's morning
dwelling upon the shocking irregularity of certain classes of French
verbs; or making useless calculations as to how long X, walking four
and a quarter miles an hour, would be overtaking Y, whose powers were
limited to three and a half, but who had started two and three quarter