I found a deal of things that Lord’s Day. I went up to look at the children’s beds and saw the blankets was gone off them, I looks in the drawers and found them empty where they should have been full of children’s clothing and bedding. I understood that day why the two eldest girls were so long getting themselves places; they had naught but what they stood up in. Folks might say I should have looked into things a bit sooner, but I were one that always said, “If the man earned the money and turned it over to the wife, it were the wife’s place to lay it out to advantage.” We had not been living in that house above a twelvemonth, but it all come about since we’d moved in. I could see nothing wrong with the street when we took the house; it looked quiet enough. It had not been built so long; the house was clean and airy, and there was an extra room for the lads, that were the chiefest thing we moved for. How was I to know, when nobody telled me, that the women in this was all a-cheating their husbands, and was just one a bigger gambler than another. As near as I can make out their practices was like this. They’d all back horses with the money they should have kept in a safe place against rent day, and them that lost would wait while Monday when the packman come round, and they’d take a suit of clothes or a pair of blankets on the weekly payment system. Straight away they would carry them to the pawn-shop, so their husbands having never set eyes on the stuff would never miss it out of the house. I suppose they’d think they’d done a clever thing when they had raised the money for the rent and a bit over besides to back another horse. Sometimes the Day of Judgment would seem to have come to one or another when county court summonses would come to their house, but so long as their husbands did not see the papers, they’d put off the day of reckoning a bit longer. My wife says they’d run round to one another’s houses and say, “I’m in a deal of trouble, will you oblige me to-day by taking a pair of blankets off the Clothing Company and pledge them for me, and I’ll pay you back when I can? And if you get into trouble some day, I’ll help you out if you’ll just oblige me this once.” My wife knew nothing about such ways afore we came to live in this street, but she were a quick learner, and got into it like a lad gets into his new sums when he gets put up a standard at school. It’s none so very hard when it’s put plain—horses, packman, pawn-shop, and a county court; and then over again, more horses, more packmen, more pawn-shops, and more county court.