your rent.'

'Ah, sir, I suppose so,' answered John with a sigh; 'and how we're to
pay it, I don't know. If I could only get well, I shouldn't mind; for
I'd rather break stones on the road, or sweep a crossing, than see my
poor girl slaving from morning to night for such a pittance.'

'If we were to throw down this partition, and open another window here,'
said Harker to Mr Benjamin, 'it would make a comfortable apartment of
it. There would be room, then, for a bed in the recess.'

Mr Benjamin, however, was at that moment engaged in the contemplation of
an ill-painted portrait of a girl, that was attached by a pin over the
chimney-piece. It was without a frame, for the respectable gilt one that
had formerly encircled it, had been taken off, and sold to buy bread.
Nothing could be coarser than the execution of the thing, but as is not
unfrequently the case with such productions, the likeness was striking;
and Mr Benjamin, being now in the habit of seeing Mary, who bought all
the meal they used at his shop, recognised it at once.

'That's your daughter, is it?' he said.

'Yes, sir; she's often at your place for meal; and if it wasn't too
great a liberty, I would ask you, sir, if you thought you could help her
to some sort of employment that's better than sewing; for it's a hard
life, sir, in this close place for a young creature that was brought up
in the free country air: not that Mary minds work, but the worst is,
there's so little to be got by the needle, and it's such close
confinement.'