The End
and his thin face was always either deathly pale or dyed with a crimson flush.
Frankie also began to show the effects of being obliged to go so often without his porridge and milk. He became very pale and thin and his long hair came out in handfuls when his mother combed or brushed it. This was a great trouble to the boy, who since hearing the story of Samson read out of the Bible at school had ceased from asking to have his curls cut short, lest he should lose his strength also. He used to test himself by going through a certain exercise he had invented with a flat iron, and he was always much relieved when he found that notwithstanding the loss of the porridge, he was still able to lift the iron the proper number of times. But after a while, as he found it became increasingly difficult, he gave it up altogether, secretly resolving to wait until 'Dad' had more work to do, so that he could have the porridge and milk again. He was sorry to have to discontinue the exercise, but he said nothing about it to his father or mother because he did not want to 'worry' them.
Nora managed to get a 'charing' job at a boarding house where the servant was laid up. Owen did not want her to go, knowing how physically incapable she was of doing heavy work. On the second day in consequence of continually running up and down stairs with heavy cans of water she was in such intense pain that she was scarcely able to walk home, and for several days afterwards had to lie in bed through a recurrence of her old illness, which caused her to suffer untold agony whenever she tried to stand.
Alternately dejected and maddened by the knowledge of his own helplessness, Owen went about the town trying to find some other work, but with scant success. He did samples of show cards and window tickets and endeavoured to get orders by canvassing the shops in the town, but this was also a failure, for these people generally had a ticket writer to whom they gave their work, and when he did get a few trifling orders, they were scarcely worth doing at the price.
He used to feel like a criminal each time he entered a shop to ask for the work, because he realised that in effect, he was saying to them: 'Take your work away from the other man and employ me.' He was so conscious of this that it gave him a shamefaced manner, which, coupled as it was with his shabby clothing, did not create a very favourable
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