At this point the landlord's wife joined us in the parlour, with a pretty child in her arms and another shy one clinging to her skirts, completing the picture of felicity and prosperity, and throwing into greater shadow the attic to which I shortly afterwards climbed my way up the steep, airless stairs. I was hardly prepared for the depressing spectacle that awaited me at their summit. It was not so much the shabby, fusty rooms, devoid of everything save a couple of mattresses, a rickety wooden table, a chair or two, and a heap of Passover cakes, as the unloveliness of the three women who stood there, awkward and flushing before their important visitor. The wife-and-mother was dwarfed and black-wigged, the daughters were squat, with tallow-coloured round faces, vaguely suggestive of Caucasian peasants, while the sightless eye of the elder lent a final touch of ugliness. How little my academic friends know me who imagine I am allured by the ugly! It is only that sometimes I see through it a beauty that they are blind to. But here I confess I saw nothing but the ghastly misery and squalor, and I was oppressed almost to sickness as much by the scene as by the atmosphere. 'May I open a window?' I could not help inquiring. The genial landlord, who had followed in my footsteps, rushed to anticipate me, and when I could breathe more freely, I found something of the tragedy that had been swallowed in the sordidness. My eye fell again on the figure of my host standing in his drooping majesty, the droop being now necessary to avoid striking the ceiling with his kingly head. Surely a pretty wife and graceful daughters would have detracted from the splendour of the tragedy. Israel stood there, surrounded by all that was mean, yet losing nothing of his regal dignity--indeed the Man of Sorrows. * * * * * Ere I left I suddenly remembered to ask after the three younger children. They were still with their kind benefactor, the father told me. 'I suppose you will resume possession of them when you make your fortune by the piece-sorting?' I said. 'God grant it,' he replied. 'My bowels yearn for that day.' Against my intention I slipped into his hand the final seven pounds I was prepared to pay. 'If your partnership scheme fails, try again alone,' I said. His blessings pursued me down the steep staircase. His womankind remained shy and dumb. When I got home I found a telegram from the Parsonage. My father was dangerously ill. I left everything and hastened to help nurse him. My picture was not sent in to any Exhibition--I could not let it go without seeing it again, without a last touch or two. When, some months later, I returned to town, my first thought--inspired by the sight of my picture--was how Quarriar was faring. I left the studio and telephoned to Sir Asher Aaronsberg at the London office of his great Middleton business.