But Sam was not remarkable for wisdom; indeed, had he been anything more than a foolish calculating-machine, he would scarcely have thriven as he did in the City. When he had grown accustomed to rattling loose silver in his pocket, the next thing, as a matter of course, was that he accustomed himself to pay far too frequent visits to City bars. On certain days in the week he invariably came home with a very red face and a titubating walk; when Bessie received him angrily, he defended himself on the great plea of business necessities. As a town traveller there was no possibility, he alleged, of declining invitations to refresh himself; just as incumbent upon him was it to extend casual hospitality to those with whom he had business. ‘Business! Fiddle!’ cried Bessie. ‘All you City fellows are the same. You encourage each other in drink, drink, drinking whenever you have a chance, and then you say it’s all a matter of business. I won’t have you coming home in that state, so there! I won’t have a husband as drinks! Why, you can’t stand straight.’ ‘Can’t stand straight!’ echoed Sam, with vast scorn. ‘Look here!’ And he shouldered the poker, with the result that one of the globes on the chandelier came in shivers about his head. This was too much. Bessie fumed, and for a couple of hours the quarrel was unappeasable. Worse was to come. Sam occasionally stayed out very late at night, and on his return alleged a ‘business appointment.’ Bessie at length refused to accept these excuses; she couldn’t and wouldn’t believe them. ‘Then don’t!’ shouted Sam. ‘And understand that I shall come home just when I like. If you make a bother I won’t come home at all, so there you have it!’ ‘You’re a bad husband and a beast!’ was Bessie’s retort. Shortly after that Bessie received information of such grave misconduct on her husband’s part that she all but resolved to forsake the house, and with the children seek refuge under her parents’ roof at Woolwich. Sam had been seen in indescribable company; no permissible words would characterise the individuals with whom he had roamed shamelessly on the pavement of Oxford Street. When he next met her, quite sober and with exasperatingly innocent expression, Bessie refused to open her lips. Neither that evening nor the next would she utter a word to him—and the effort it cost her was tremendous. The result was, that on the third evening Sam did not appear. It was a week after Clem’s trial. Jane had been keeping to herself as much as possible, but, having occasion to go down into the kitchen late at night, she found Bessie in tears, utterly miserable. ‘Don’t bother about me!’ was the reply to her sympathetic question. ‘You’ve got your own upsets to think of. You might have come to speak to me before this—but never mind. It’s nothing to you.’ It needed much coaxing to persuade her to detail Sam’s enormities, but she found much relief when she had done so, and wept more copiously than ever.