He used to keep a second-hand furniture shop, which, you must understand, is a very different thing from an antique shop. Jim’s furniture had no determinate character such as that which is associated with the name of Chippendale, Sheraton or Heppelwhite. It was just “furniture.” Well-worn sofas, broken chairs and tables, mattresses with the stuffing exuding from holes, rusty brass beds with the knobs missing, broken pots and mirrors and dumb-bells; even clothes, and screws, false teeth and bird-cages, and ancient umbrellas. But his specialty was old iron. Trays and trays and baskets filled with scraps of old iron. His establishment used to be known in Camden Town at that time as “The Muck Shop.” At odd times of the day you might observe his small pathetic figure trundling a barrow laden with the spoils of some hard-pressed inhabitant. What a tale the little shop seemed to tell! Struggle and poverty, homes broken up, drink, ugly passions, desperate sacrifices—a battered array of the symbols of distress. And, somehow, in his person these stories seemed to be embodied. One felt that he was sorry for the people whose property he bought. He was always known as a fair dealer. He paid a fair price and never took advantage of ignorance. His marriage was a failure from the very first. She was a big, strapping woman, the daughter of a local greengrocer. Twelve years younger than Jim, vain, frivolous, empty-headed and quarrelsome. Her reasons for marrying him were obscure. Probably she had arrived at the time when she wanted to marry, and Jim was regarded as a successful shop-keeper who could keep her in luxury. He was blinded by her physical attractions, and tried his utmost to believe that his wife was everything to be desired. Disillusionment came within the first month of their married life, at the moment, indeed, when Clara realized that her husband’s business was not so thriving as she had been led to believe. She immediately accused him of deceiving her. Then, she began to sulk and neglect him. She despised his manner of conducting business—his conscientiousness and sense of fair-dealing. “If you’d put some ginger into it,” she once remarked, “and not always be thinking about the feelings of the tripe you buy from, we might have a house in the Camden Road and a couple of servants.” This had never been Jim’s ambition. Many years ago he had attended a sale at Shorwell Green, on the borders of Sussex, a glorious spot near the downs, amidst lime-trees and little running streams. It had been the dream of his life that one day he would retire there, with the woman he loved—and her children. When he put the matter to Clara, she laughed him to scorn. “Not half!” she said. “Catch me living among butterflies and blinking cows. The Camden Road is my game.”