Even with the latch of the gate in his hand, he hesitated.

A child in a spotted velveteen suit and a soiled lace collar, who had been playing in the street, greeted him with an amazed shout and then ran on ahead.
"Mummy, come and look at Daddy!" the boy shrieked.

"He's cut off all the hair from his lip and he's got such funny clothes on! Do come and look at his hat!" The child was puny, unprepossessing, and dirty.

Worse tragedy than this, Burton knew it.

The woman who presently appeared to gaze at him with open-mouthed wonder, was pretentiously and untidily dressed, with some measure of good looks woefully obscured by a hard and unsympathetic expression.