Mrs.Brunt had an income of two-and-sixpence a week, _plus_ two loaves from the parish, and one of the parish or "charity" houses, a hovel, that is to say, of one room, scarcely fit for human habitation at all.

She had lost five children, was allowed two shillings a week by two labourer sons, and earned sixpence a week--about--by continuous work at "the plait." Her husband had been run over by a farm cart and killed; up to the time of his death his earnings averaged about twenty-eight pounds a year.

Much the same with the Pattons.

They had lost eight children out of ten, and were now mainly supported by the wages of a daughter in service.

Mrs.Patton had of late years suffered agonies and humiliations indescribable, from a terrible illness which the parish doctor was quite incompetent to treat, being all through a singularly sensitive woman, with a natural instinct for the decorous and the beautiful.
Amazing! Starvation wages; hardships of sickness and pain; horrors of birth and horrors of death; wholesale losses of kindred and friends; the meanest surroundings; the most sordid cares--of this mingled cup of village fate every person in the room had drunk, and drunk deep.