on no account afford to lose so good a customer. For many years that
house, licensed for the sale of non-spirituous liquors, had been
working Mrs. Candy's ruin; not a particle of her frame but was
vitiated by the drugs retailed there under the approving smile of
civilisation. Spirits would have been harmless in comparison. The
advantage of Mrs. Green's ale was that the very first half-pint gave
conscience its bemuddling sop; for a penny you forgot all the cares
of existence; for threepence you became a yelling maniac.

Poor, poor creature She was sober to-night, sitting over the fire
with her face battered into shapelessness; and now that her fury had
had its way, she bitterly repented invoking the help of the law
against her husband. What use? what use? Perhaps he had now
abandoned her for good, and it was certain that the fear of him was
the only thing that ever checked her on the ruinous road she would
so willingly have quitted. But for the harm to himself, the only
pity was he had not taken her life outright. She knew all the
hatefulness of her existence; she knew also that only the grave
would rescue her from it. The struggle was too unequal between Mrs.
Candy with her appeal to Providence, and Mrs. Green with the forces
of civilisation at her back.

Pennyloaf speedily returned with a ha'p'orth of milk, a pennyworth
of tea, and seven pounds (also price one penny) of coals in an
apron. It was very seldom indeed that the Candys had more of
anything in their room than would last them for the current day.
There being no kettle, water was put on to boil in a tin saucepan;
the tea was made in a jug. Pennyloaf had always been a good girl to
her mother; she tended her as well as she could to-night; but there
was no word of affection from either. Kindly speech was stifled by