Mrs. Timbs had worked harder and harder, and gone out in more and more shabby clothes, and one by one taken the little comforts away to the pawnshop, never to bring them back again. She turned her hand patiently to any means by which an honest penny might be earned, for hers was a brave nature: she went out charing, she took in needlework, she took in washing; but however willing the spirit, the poor human body was weak. The face of Mrs. Timbs grew thin and hollow, the frame of Mrs. Timbs became skin and bone. Of her heart no one spoke, no one thought; but there was a pathos about her eyes, and a few lines about her mouth, which showed that her heart was not at rest. Neither Timbs nor his wife were religious people. In their palmy days they had never gone to church; they had spent Sundays in the Park or resting at home. Very innocent Sundays they had passed in those days, but in no sense of the word religious ones. In her happy days Mrs. Timbs had never sought after God. She knew of God, of course; she knew also something of the Bible, and had even once gone so far as to tell to Patty and Molly the story of Moses being drawn out of the water; but with religion in a practical way she did not trouble her head. Her idea was that religion was a very dull thing; that there was a great deal of moonshine and false sentiment about religious people, but that, of course, it was useful for consumptive and dying folks to think about it. Neither in her dark days did she turn to religion; but a verse from the old Book she had neglected and cast aside, floated now and then before her mind, rang now and then in her ears. "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest," was the verse. At night, when she lay down with every limb aching, she thought of this verse; in the morning, when she rose to her unthankful toil, it returned to her. All the last few months before Robin was born, this verse went about with Mrs. Timbs, and became the echo of her every wish. The ruin, however, that the Dolphin effected indirectly on Mrs. Timbs, was nothing nothing at all to the ruin it directly effected on her husband. In the first place, it undermined his health--his eyes grew dim, his frame weak and stooping, his powerful arm nerveless. He was a mason by trade, and, before he went to the Dolphin, could ascend any height without dizziness; but he had to give all this up now; he suffered from burning thirst, he loathed all wholesome food; in short, the health of the man was gone, and he had already passed through two attacks of _delirium tremens_. In the next place, the Dolphin attacked his mind.