The New Tenants
They still had credit at the baker's, but they did not take much bread: when one has had scarcely anything else but bread to eat for nearly a month it is difficult to eat at all. That same day, when he returned home after his interview with the grocer, they had a loaf of beautiful fresh bread, but none of them could eat it, although they were hungry: it seemed to stick in their throats, and they could not swallow it even with the help of a drink of tea. But they drank the tea, which was the one thing that enabled them to go on living.
The next week Owen earned eight shillings altogether; a few hours he put in assisting Crass to wash off and whiten a ceiling and paint a room, and there was one coffin plate. He wrote the latter at home, and while he was doing it he heard Frankie, who was out in the scullery with Nora, say to her:
'Mother, how many more days do you think we'll have to have only dry bread and tea?'
Owen's heart seemed to stop as he heard the child's question and listened for Nora's answer; but the question was not to be answered at all just then, for at that moment they heard someone running up the stairs, and presently the door was unceremoniously thrown open and Charley Linden rushed into the house, out of breath, hatless, and crying piteously. His clothes were old and ragged; they had been patched at the knees and elbows, but the patches were tearing away from the rotting fabric underneath. He had on a pair of black stockings full of holes through which the skin was showing. The soles of his boots were worn through at one side right to the uppers, and as he walked the sides of his bare heels came into contact with the floor. The front part of the sole of one boot was separated from the upper, and his bare toes, red with cold and covered with mud, protruded through the gap.
All that they could make out between his heartrending sobs was that his grandfather and grandmother had gone to the workhouse that afternoon, and he thought his mother was dead or dying; he could not make her open her eyes or speak to him.
When Nora hurried back with him to the house she found that Mary had recovered from her faint and was lying down on the bed. Nora lit the fire and gave the children their tea. There was still some coal and food left of what had been bought
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