“You go back to your corner and leave your mother to me,” he said; and Fan, after hesitating a few moments, rose and shrank away. Presently he got up again, and seizing his wife by the wrist, dragged her hand forcibly from her face. “Where's the coppers, you blarsted drunkard?” he shouted in her ear. “D'ye think to get off with the little crack on the crown I've giv' you? I'll do for you to-night if you won't hand over.” “Oh, father, father!” cried the girl, starting up in an agony of terror. “Oh, have mercy and don't hit her, and I'll go out and try to get threepence. Oh, father, there's nothing in the house!” “Then go, and don't be long about it,” he said, going back to his seat. The mother roused herself at this. “You sha'n't stir a step to-night, Fan,” she said, but in a voice not altogether resolute. “What'll come to you, going into the streets at this time of night?” “Something grand, like what's come to her mother, perhaps,” said he with a laugh. “Not a step, Fan, if I die for it,” retorted the mother, stung by his words. But the girl quickly and with trembling hands had already thrust on her old shapeless hat, and wrapped her shawl about her; then she took a couple of boxes of safety matches, old and greasy from long use, and moved towards the door as her mother rose to prevent her from going out. “Oh, mother, let me go,” she pleaded. “It's best for all of us. It'll kill me to stay in. Let me go, mother; I sha'n't be long.” Her mother still protested; but Fan, seeing her irresolution, slipped past her and was out of the door in a moment. Once out of the house she ran swiftly along the dark sloppy street until she came to the wide thronged thoroughfare, bright with the flaring gas of the shops; then, after a few moments' hesitation, walked rapidly northwards. Even in that squalid street where she lived, those who knew Fan from living in the same house, or in one of those immediately adjoining it, considered it a disgraceful thing for her parents to send her out begging; for that was what they called it, although the begging was made lawful by the match-selling pretext. To them it was a very flimsy one, since the cost of a dozen such boxes at any oil-shop in the Edgware Road was twopence-three-farthings--eleven farthings for twelve boxes of safety matches! The London poor know how hard it is to live and pay their weekly rent, and are accustomed to make every allowance for each other; and those who sat in judgment on the Harrods--Fan's parents--were mostly people who were glad to make a shilling by almost any means; glad also, many of them, to get drunk occasionally when the state of the finances allowed it; also they regarded it as the natural and right thing to do to repair regularly every Monday morning to the pawnbroker's shop to pledge the Sunday shoes and children's frocks, with perhaps a tool or two or a pair of sheets and blankets not too dirty and ragged to tempt the cautious gentleman with the big nose.