Only in the second half-year did he really accustom himself to disregard a customer's poverty.

He had thought the thing out, faced all its most sordid aspects.

Yes, he was fighting with these people for daily bread; he and his could live only if his three farthings of profit were plucked out of that toil worn hand of charwoman or sempstress.

Accept the necessity, and think no more of it.

He was a man behind the counter; he saw face to face the people who supported him.
With this exception had not things been just the same when he sat in the counting-house at the sugar refinery?
It was an unpleasant truth, which appearances had formerly veiled from him.
With the beginning of his second winter came a new anxiety, a new source of bitter and degrading reflections.