“There’s a penny for you,” said Nellie, “and here’s a penny for Dicky,” patting a little five-year-old on the head, “and here’s one to buy some milk for the baby.”

Johnny rose with glad eagerness, the baby in his arms and the pennies in his hand.

“I shall buy ‘specks’ with mine,” he cried joyfully.

“What’s ‘specks?’” asked Ned, puzzled, as the children went off, the elder staggering under his burden.

“‘Specks!’ Damaged fruit, half rotten.  The garbage of the rich sold as a feast to these poor little ones?” cried Nellie, a hot anger in her face and voice that made Ned dumb.

She entered the doorway.  Ned followed her through a room where a man and a couple of boys were hammering away at some boots, reaching thereby a narrow, creaking stairway, hot as a chimney, almost pitch dark, being lighted only by an occasional half-opened door, up which he stumbled clumsily.  Through one of these open doors he caught a glimpse of a couple of girls sewing; through another of a woman with a baby in arms tidying-up a bare floored room, which seemed to be bedroom, kitchen and dining room in one; from behind a closed door came the sound of voices, one shrilly laughing.  Unused to stairways his knees ached before they reached the top.  He was glad enough when Nellie knocked loudly at a door through which came the whirring of a sewing machine.  The noise stopped for a moment while a sharp voice called them to “come in,” then started again.  Nellie opened the door.

At the open window of a small room, barely furnished with a broken iron bedstead, some case boards knocked together for a table and fixed against the wall, a couple of shaky chairs and a box, a sharp featured woman sat working a machine, as if for dear life.  The heat of the room was made hotter by the little grate in which a fire had recently been burning and on which still stood the teapot.  Some cups and a plate or two, with a cut loaf of bread and a jam tin of sugar, littered the table.  The scanty bed was unmade.  The woman wore a limp cotton dress of uncertain colour, rolled up at the sleeves and opened at the neck for greater coolness.  She was thin and sharp; she was so busy you understood that she had no time to be clean and tidy.  She seemed pleased to see Nellie and totally indifferent at seeing Ned, but kept on working after nodding to them.

Nellie motioned Ned to sit down, which he did on the edge of the bed, not caring to trust the shaky chairs.  She went to the side of the sharp-featured woman, and sitting down on the foot of the bed by the machine watched her working without a word.  Ned could see on the ground, in a paper parcel, a heap of cloth of various colours, and on the bed some new coats folded and piled up.  On the machine was another coat, being sewn.

It was ten minutes before the machine stopped, ten minutes for Ned to look about and think in.  He knew without being told that this miserable room was the home of the three children to whom Nellie had given the pennies, and that here their mother worked to feed them.  Their feeding he could see on the table.  Their home he could see.  The work that gave it to them he could see.  For the first time in his life he felt ashamed of being an Australian.