"We hadn't been going a fortnight before he asked me to accept half salary, swearing he would make it up, with a rise, as soon as business got better.

Like an idiot, I consented." His friend sat down again hopelessly.

"I don't know what's going to become of us.

The missus has pawned everything she has got, poor old girl! Oh, it's damned hard! We had been out six months." "Poor old chap!" said Paul, sitting on the bed beside his portmanteau.
"How does Mrs.Wilmer take it ?" "She's knocked endways.

You see," cried Wilmer desperately, "we've had to send home everything we could scrape together to keep the kids--there's five of them; and now--and now there's nothing left.