So they came down from three well-furnished rooms to a kitchen and parlour, and from that to one miserable apartment, serving all purposes at once. Then they moved to London to look for employment; and Tom Blacke, a handy fellow enough when sober, obtained a series of situations, all of which he lost owing to his convivial failing. Now they paid two shillings a week for the wretched room in which we find them, and a hard matter it often was to raise money for the rent, and their own living, and Tom’s score at “The Feathers,” just round the corner. But Gingham worked for the whole family, as a woman will when put to it, and seemed to love her husband the better the worse he used her, as is constantly the case with that long-suffering sex. “Poor fellow,” she would say, when Tom reeled home to swear at her in drunken ferocity, or kiss her in maudlin kindness, “it’s trouble that’s drove him to it; but there’s good in Tom yet--look how fond he is of baby.” And with all his faults, there is no doubt little Miss Blacke possessed a considerable share of her father’s heart, such as it was. But even gentle woman’s temper is not proof against being kept waiting, that most irritating of all trials; and Gingham, who in her more prosperous days had been a lady of considerable asperity, could “pluck up a spirit,” as she called it, even now, when she was “_raised_,”--so, surmounting the coffee-coloured front with a dingy bonnet, and folding her bare arms in a faded shawl, she locked baby in, trusting devoutly the child might not wake during her absence, and marched stoutly off to “The Feathers,” where she was sure to find her good-for-nothing husband. There he was, sure enough, just as she expected, his old black coat glazed and torn, his pinched-up hat pressed down over his pale, sunken features, his whole appearance dirty and emaciated. None but his wife could have recognised the dapper Tom Blacke, of St. Swithin’s, in that shaky, scowling, dissipated sot. Alas! she knew him in his present character too well. There he was, playing skittles with a ponderous ruffian, in a linen jacket and high-lows, who looked like a showman of a travelling menagerie, only not so respectable; and a little Jew pedlar, with a hawk eye and an expression of countenance that defied Mephistopheles himself to overreach him. There was her husband, betting pots of beer and “goes” of gin, though the cupboard was bare at home and the child crying for food--marking his game with a trembling hand, cheating when he won, and blaspheming when he lost, like the very blackguard to which he was rapidly descending. Gingham shook a little as she advanced, twirling the door-key nervously round her finger; but she determined to try the _suaviter in modo_ first, so she began, “Tom! Tom Blacke! dinner’s ready, ain’t you coming home?”