And he could not breathe a word of it to his wife. Oh that better
curse of poverty, which puts corrupting poison into the wounds
inflicted by nature, which outrages the spirit's tenderness, which
profanes with unutterable defilement the secret places of the
mourning heart! He could not, durst not, speak a word of this misery
to her whose gratitude and love had resisted every trial, who had
shared uncomplainingly all the evil of his lot, and had borne with
supreme patience those added sufferings of which he had no
conception. For she lay on her deathbed. The doctor told him so on
the very day when he learnt that it would be out of his power to
discharge the fitting pieties at her grave. So far from looking to
her for sympathy, it behoved him to keep from her as much as a
suspicion of what had happened.
Their home at this time was a kitchen in King's Cross Road. The
eldest child, Amy, was now between ten and eleven; Annie was nine;
Tom seven. These, of course, went to school every day, and were
being taught to appreciate the woefulness of their inheritance. Amy
was, on the whole, a good girl; she could make purchases as well as
her mother, and when in the mood, look carefully after her little
brother and sister; but already she had begun to display restiveness
under the hard discipline to which the domestic poverty subjected
her.
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