n, who tried to be clean but who had long ago given up
in despair any attempt at looking natty and had now no ambition for
herself but to have something "decent" to go out in. Once it was her
ambition also to have a "I room." She had scraped and saved and pared in
dull times for this "room" and when once Joe had a long run of steady
work she had launched out into what those who know how workingmen's wives
should live would have denounced as the wildest extravagance. A gilt
framed mirror and a sofa, four spidery chairs and a round table, a
wonderful display of wax apples under a glass shade, a sideboard and a
pair of white lace curtains hanging from a pole, with various ornaments
and pictures of noticeable appearance, also linoleum for the floor, had
finally been gathered together and were treasured for a time as household
gods indeed. In those days there was hardly a commandment in the
decalogue that Mephistopheles might not have induced Mrs. Phillips to
commit by judicious praise of her "room." Her occasional "visitors" were
ushered into it with an air of pride that was alone enough to illuminate
the dingy, musty little place. Between herself and those of her
neighbours who had "rooms" there was a fierce rivalry, while those of
inferior grade--and they were in the majority--regarded her with an
envy not unmixed with dislike.

But those times were gone for poor Mrs. Phillips. We all know how they
go, excepting those who do not want to know. Work gradually became more
uncertain, wages fell and rents kept up. They had one room of the small
five-roomed house let already. They let another--"they" being her and
Joe. Finally, they had to let the room. The chairs, the round table and
the sofa wore bartered at a second-hand store for bedroom furniture. The
mirror and the sideboard were brought out into the kitchen, and on the
sideboard the wax fruit still stood like the lingering shrine of a
departed faith.

The "room" was now the lodging of two single men, as the good old
ship-phrase goes. Upstairs, in the room over the kitchen, the Phillips
family slept, six in all. There would have been seven, only the eldest
girl, a child of ten, slept with Nellie in the little front room over the
door, an arrangement which was not in the bond but was volunteered by the
single woman in one of her fits of indignation against pigging together.
The other front room was also rented by a single man when they could get
him. Just now it was tenan