"I've plenty to do mending of Charley's trousers. You see they're only shoddy, and as fast as I patch 'em in one place they're out in another." "But you oughtn't to work Sundays." "I have heard tell of people as say you oughtn't to work of a Sunday; but where's the differ when you've got a brother to look after? He ain't got no mother." "But you're breaking the fourth commandment; and you know where people go that do that. You believe in hell, I suppose." "I always thought that was a bad word." "To be sure! But it's where you'll go if you break the Sabbath." "Oh, sir!" she said, bursting into tears, "I don't care what become of me if I could only save that boy." "What do you mean by _saving_ him?" "Keep him out of prison, to be sure. I shouldn't mind the workus myself, if I could get him into a place." _A place_ was her heaven, a prison her hell. Stephen looked at her more attentively. No one who merely glanced at her could help seeing her eyes first, and no one who regarded them could help thinking her nice-looking at least, all in a shabby cotton dress and black shawl as she was. It was only the "penury and pine" that kept her from being beautiful. Her features were both regular and delicate, with an anxious mystery about the thin tremulous lips, and a beseeching look, like that of an animal, in her fine eyes, hazy with the trouble that haunted her mouth. Stephen had the good sense not to press the Sabbath question, and by degrees drew her story from her. Her father had been a watchmaker, but, giving way to drink, had been, as far back as she could remember, entirely dependent on her mother, who by charing and jobbing managed to keep the family alive. Sara was then the only child, but, within a few months after her father's death, her mother died in giving birth to the boy. With her last breath she had commended him to his sister. Sara had brought him up--how she hardly knew. He had been everything to her. The child that her mother had given her was all her thought. Those who start with the idea "that people with nought are naughty," whose eyes are offended by rags, whose ears cannot distinguish between vulgarity and wickedness, and who think the first duty is care for self, must be excused from believing that Sara Coulter passed through all that had been _decreed_ for her without losing her simplicity and purity. But God is in the back slums as certainly as--perhaps to some eyes more evidently than--in Belgravia. That which was the burden of her life--namely, the care of her brother--was her salvation. After hearing her story, which he had to draw from her, because she had no impulse to talk about herself, Stephen went home to turn the matter over in his mind.