conversation to Thomas, to make up.

"I'm sorry," Peter apologised, "but, you see, Thomas, it's all we can
afford. You don't earn anything at all, and I only earn a pound a week,
which is barely enough to keep you in drink. I don't deserve even that,
for I don't address envelopes well; but I suppose they know it's such a
detestable job that they haven't the face to give me less."

Peter was addressing envelopes because a Robinson relative had given him
the job, and he hadn't the nerve to refuse it. He couldn't well refuse
it, because of Thomas. Uncompanioned by Thomas he would probably have
chosen instead to sweep a crossing or play a barrel-organ, or stand at
a street corner with outstretched hat (though this last would only have
done for a summer engagement, as Peter didn't like the winds that play
round street corners in winter). But Thomas was very much there, and had
to be provided for; so Peter copied letters and addressed envelopes and
earned twenty shillings weekly, and out of it paid for Thomas's drink and
Thomas's Girl and his own food, and beds and a sitting-room and fires
and laundry for both, and occasional luxuries in the way of wooden
animals for Thomas to play with. So they were not extremely poor; they
were respectably well-to-do. For Thomas's sake, Peter supposed it was
worth while not to be extremely poor, even though it meant addressing
envelopes and living in a great grey prison-house of a city, where one
only surmised the first early pushings of the spring beyond the
encompassing gloom.

Peter used to tell Thomas about that, in order that he might know
something of the joyous world beyond the walls. He told Thomas in March,
taking time by the forelock, about the early violets that were going some
time to open blue eyes in the ditches by the roads where the spring winds