Characteristic of the locality is a certain row of one-storey cottages—­villas, the advertiser calls them—­built of white brick, each with one bay window on the ground floor, a window pretentiously fashioned and desiring to be taken for stone, though obviously made of bad plaster.  Before each house is a garden, measuring six feet by three, entered by a little iron gate, which grinds as you push it, and at no time would latch.  The front-door also grinds on the sill; it can only be opened by force, and quivers in a way that shows how unsubstantially it is made.  As you set foot in the pinched passage, the sound of your tread proves the whole fabric a thing of lath and sand.  The ceilings, the walls, confess themselves neither water-tight nor air-tight.  Whatever you touch is at once found to be sham.

In the kitchen of one of these houses, at two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon in September, three young people were sitting down to the dinner-table:  a girl of nearly fourteen, her sister, a year younger, and their brother not yet eleven.  All were decently dressed, but very poorly; a glance at them, and you knew that in this house there was little money to spend on superfluities.  The same impression was produced by the appointments of the kitchen, which was disorderly, too, and spoke neglect of the scrubbing-brush.  As for the table, it was ill laid and worse supplied.  The meal was to consist of the fag-end of a shoulder of mutton, some villainously cooked potatoes (a l’Anglaise) and bread.

‘Oh, I can’t eat this rot again!’ cried the boy, making a dig with his fork at the scarcely clad piece of bone.  ’I shall have bread and cheese.  Lug the cheese out, Annie!’

‘No, you won’t,’ replied the elder girl, in a disagreeable voice.  ‘You’ll eat this or go without.’

She had an unpleasing appearance.  Her face was very thin, her lips pinched sourly together, her eyes furtive, hungry, malevolent.  Her movements were awkward and impatient, and a morbid nervousness kept her constantly starting, with a stealthy look here or there.

‘I shall have the cheese if I like!’ shouted the boy, a very ill-conditioned youngster, whose face seemed to have been damaged in recent conflict.  His clothes were dusty, and his hair stood up like stubble.

‘Hold your row, Tom,’ said the younger girl, who was quiet and had the look of an invalid.  ’It’s always you begins.  Besides, you can’t have cheese; there’s only a little bit, and Sidney said he was going to make his dinner of it to-day.’

‘Of course—­selfish beast!’

’Selfish!  Now just listen to that, Amy! when he said it just that we mightn’t be afraid to finish the meat.’

Amy said nothing, but began to hack fragments off the bone.

‘Put some aside for father first,’ continued Annie, holding a plate.

‘Father be blowed!’ cried Tom.  ’You just give me that first cut.  Give it here, Annie, or I’ll crack you on the head!’