She would have concealed from him her illness and her poverty.

His quick alarm exaggerated the last into utter want;--he uttered a cry that rang through the shop, and rushed to Mr.Plaskwith.
"Sir, sir! my mother is dying! She is poor, poor, perhaps starving;--money, money!--lend me money!--ten pounds!--five!--I will work for you all my life for nothing, but lend me the money!" "Hoity-toity!" said Mrs.Plaskwith, nudging her husband--"I told you what would come of it: it will be 'money or life' next time." Philip did not heed or hear this address; but stood immediately before the bookseller, his hands clasped--wild impatience in his eyes.

Mr.
Plaskwith, somewhat stupefied, remained silent.
"Do you hear me ?--are you human ?" exclaimed Philip, his emotion revealing at once all the fire of his character.

"I tell you my mother is dying; I must go to her! Shall I go empty-handed! Give me money!" Mr.Plaskwith was not a bad-hearted man; but he was a formal man, and an irritable one.

The tone his shopboy (for so he considered Philip) assumed to him, before his own wife too (examples are very dangerous), rather exasperated than moved him.
"That's not the way to speak to your master:--you forget yourself, young man!" "Forget!--But, sir, if she has not necessaries-if she is starving ?" "Fudge!" said Plaskwith.