But it was not possible; and they had no conflict of mind on that point. The furniture brokers had no money--any more than other people; and the pawnbrokers' houses were so crowded, from cellar to garret, that every one of them in the city had for some time refused to take any thing more whatever. The Barclays themselves were sorely embarrassed, and eventually ruined, by the same crash. The very little they could do was needed by multitudes even more than by Richard and Jemima. They found the weaver hanging fainting over his loom, and the reduced schoolmistress sitting on the bottom stair, too dizzy with hunger to mount to her own room. They found the elderly widow too proud to own her need to the district visitors, lending her pitcher, without a handle, to the sinking family above stairs, to fetch the soup from the public kitchen; while they, sinking as they were divined her case, and left some soup at the bottom of the pitcher as if by accident. No one was more ready than Jemima to point out to the Barclays the sufferers who, while saying least about it, most wanted bread. All that her friends could do for her was to get their shoes mended by Richard, and to give her a few days' employment, now and then, by their good fire, and with three good meals in the day. How they managed it, the young couple could themselves hardly tell; but they got through. The worst times of commercial crisis must come to an end; and the end found the young people somewhat sunk in health and spirits, but clear of debt, and with all their little property safe about them. Of course their credit was good; and when people were again able to pay for their shoes, Richard was as safe as any man can be who is bound up with a system of fluctuations. As safe, that is, about money matters. But the next autumn showed him by how frail a tenure he held his very best earthly blessing. Jemima was confined; and almost before he had seen his little daughter, his wife was in the last extremity of danger. She well knew it; and the surgeon said afterward that in all his experience, he had never seen such an instance of calm and amiable good sense under the strongest possible circumstances of proof. She understood the case--her affections were all alive--her husband and child were in the room--a bright life was before her--and she was slipping away from all; yet there was no fear, and, amidst excessive exhaustion, no perturbation. The surgeon said she saved her own life, for he could not have saved her. In a few weeks she brought her little daughter to the Barclays' house; and, as she sat there, they could not help thinking that her face was almost as childlike as her infant's. It was at least much the same in its innocence and brightness, as it was on that summer evening, so many years ago, when they found it on their steps, on returning from their walk.