I am ending before I begin." Darrow knocked at the door, and the woman opened it with the coffee-pot still in her hand.
"So you've come back," she said in a voice that was without surprise and without gratitude.
"I came back to ask what you've done about a place.

This gentleman is with me.

You don't mind his stepping inside a minute ?" "Oh, no, I don't mind.

I don't mind anything." She drew back as she answered, and the two men entered the room and stood gazing at the stove with the look of embarrassment which the sight of poverty brings to the faces of the well-to-do.
"When are you moving ?" asked Darrow, withdrawing his gaze from the glimmer of the embers in the stove, and fixing it on the steam that issued from the coffee-pot.
"In the morning.

We've found a cheaper place, though with rent going up every week, it looks as if we'd soon have nowhere worse to move to, unless it's gaol alley." Her tone dripped bitterness, and the lines of her pale lips settled into an expression of scornful resignation.
Without replying to her words, Darrow nodded in the direction of the young man, who had never looked up, but sat in the same rigid attitude, with his vacant eyes staring at the hole in the carpet.
"Any better ?" "How can he be better," returned the woman grimly, "when all he does is to walk the streets until he's fit to drop, and then drag himself home and sit there like that for hours, too worn out even to lift his eyes from the floor.