Sometimes a workman came in the morning; a couple more might come in about
dinner-time. Sometimes they took rashers and bits of steak out of their
pockets.
"Won't you cook this for me, missis?"
But it was not until about nine in the evening that the real business of
the house began, and it continued till one, when the last straggler
knocked for admittance. The house lived on its beds. The best rooms were
sometimes let for eight shillings a night, and there were four beds which
were let at fourpence a night in the cellar under the area where Esther
stood by the great copper washing sheets, blankets, and counterpanes, when
she was not cleaning the rooms upstairs. There was a double-bedded room
underneath the kitchen, and over the landings, wherever a space could be
found, the landlord, who was clever at carpentering work, had fitted up
some sort of closet place that could be let as a bedroom. The house was a
honeycomb. The landlord slept under the roof, and a corner had been found
for his housekeeper, a handsome young woman, at the end of the passage.
Esther and the children--the landlord was a widower--slept in the
coffee-room upon planks laid across the tops of the high backs of the
benches where the customers mealed. Mattresses and bedding were laid on
these planks and the sleepers lay, their faces hardly two feet from the
ceiling.
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