Bunting looked round once or twice; he would have liked to ask Ellen
to leave off fidgeting, but he was fond of peace, and perhaps, by
now, a little bit ashamed of himself, so he refrained from remark,
and she soon gave over what irritated him of her own accord.

But Mrs. Bunting did not come and sit down as her husband would have
liked her to do. The sight of him, absorbed in his paper as he was,
irritated her, and made her long to get away from him. Opening the
door which separated the sitting-room from the bedroom behind, and
--shutting out the aggravating vision of Bunting sitting comfortably
by the now brightly burning fire, with the Evening Standard spread
out before him--she sat down in the cold darkness, and pressed her
hands against her temples.

Never, never had she felt so hopeless, so--so broken as now. Where
was the good of having been an upright, conscientious, self-respecting
woman all her life long, if it only led to this utter, degrading
poverty and wretchedness? She and Bunting were just past the age
which gentlefolk think proper in a married couple seeking to enter
service together, unless, that is, the wife happens to be a professed
cook. A cook and a butler can always get a nice situation. But Mrs.
Bunting was no cook. She could do all right the simple things any
lodger she might get would require, but that was all.

Lodgers? How foolish she had been to think of taking lodgers! For
it had been her doing. Bunting had been like butter in her hands.

Yet they had begun well, with a lodging-house in a seaside place.
There they had prospered, not as they had hoped to do, but still
pretty well; and then had come an epidemic of scarlet fever, and