He was beginning to see that the fuel of life was not to be had for the asking. His mother sitting the livelong day and far into the night in that big attic he had just left--the one with his little bed in the corner of it, the large room that served as general sitting-room by day, his bed with coloured covering becoming in the daylight a couch therein--his mother sitting there writing, with absent eyes fixed on her distant purpose, brought into hard reality the harder fact that money had to be earned--that it did not come from Somewhere for the beckoning. His father’s long absences, and his boots muddied with long trudges, were significant and unspoken about, hinting of mysteries he could not wholly fathom--nor was the serious gaze of the handsome face as his father sat at night and stared at the stove less troubling to the boy. He tramped down another step or two. It bothered him that he could not help. He knew he must grow into youth before his hand could win this wage that all the world was hurrying after. He tramped down a few more steps. For one thing he felt glad. He had thought it a bore when his mother had made out a scheme of reading for him, making him give his morning and a couple of hours of the afternoon to a course of English literature and history, and a promise to keep up his mathematics; but, as a matter of fact, and to his intense surprise, he was enjoying it. He tramped down a couple of steps. It was so like the mother to have clung to her books when she sold even her silks and satins! He tramped down another step. He wondered why there was no carpet to the attic flight. He wondered who lived in the rooms on each of these four landings below. That Major Modeyne, who lived on this one below them, seemed such a pleasant old fellow--it was a great pity he came in so late and so often the worse for liquor.... But he was mighty funny over it. He wondered if he felt as funny as he looked. It seemed such an odd thing to fill one’s self with strong liquors until one glugged hiccuping and ran over! He tramped down several steps. The boy had always thought of himself as being a part of a vague body of people called gentlefolk--a people who were always provided for from some gentlemanly source of livelihood which demanded clean hands and a sense of duty and no manual labour or a shop, quite a species apart from the mere middle-class world, and for whom the working classes provided the comforts of life, cleaning their boots and doing them service. Tradesmen and the labouring class, of course, were bound to earn a livelihood--a thing which he had always felt, without being expressly told so, to be rather a vulgar thing to do; although, of course, it was a very good thing for that sort of people. As he reached the bottom of the uncarpeted stair, and was about to step on to the drugget of the landing, a door opened, and there came out on to the landing a child of about twelve.