Everything in the room was strong and substantial, and each article of furniture had been bought at a well-conducted auction held in a private house.
Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out the fog-laden, drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road, had cost a mere song, and yet they might have been warranted to last another thirty years.
A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat forward, staring into the dull, small fire.

In fact, that arm-chair had been an extravagance of Mrs.Bunting.She had wanted her husband to be comfortable after the day's work was done, and she had paid thirty-seven shillings for the chair.

Only yesterday Bunting had tried to find a purchaser for it, but the man who had come to look at it, guessing their cruel necessities, had only offered them twelve shillings and sixpence for it; so for the present they were keeping their arm-chair.
But man and woman want something more than mere material comfort, much as that is valued by the Buntings of this world.

So, on the walls of the sitting-room, hung neatly framed if now rather faded photographs--photographs of Mr.and Mrs.Bunting's various former employers, and of the pretty country houses in which they had separately lived during the long years they had spent in a not unhappy servitude.
But appearances were not only deceitful, they were more than usually deceitful with regard to these unfortunate people.

In spite of their good furniture--that substantial outward sign of respectability which is the last thing which wise folk who fall into trouble try to dispose of--they were almost at the end of their tether.