I felt that I could do this without injury to my conscience, and when we returned to the soot-garden I did it.
John got a hiding all the same, and I didn't offer myself as a substitute; for my feet were very sore, and I felt that he was a wicked boy who deserved all the chastisement he could get.
In the days which followed, my understanding of "respectability" was much ripened.
There was another family in the house.
Its head was a fat old lady with corkscrew ringlets (I'd never seen corkscrew ringlets before), who sat everlastingly in front of the fire, like Patience in a hair-seated rocking-chair (I'd never seen a hair-seated chair before), toasting endless slices of bread (I'd never seen toast before). There were her two thin, middle-aged, maiden daughters, who were perfect types of the British old maid (and I'd never seen an old maid before). There was also a son, who washed up the pots, and occasionally went out into the garden to feed the hens, dressed in a pair of shabby gaiters, a rusty tall hat, and a cane.
The landlady informed us that they were a family of the highest respectability. They never paid any rent, and owed money to all the tradesmen in the neighbourhood; but they always went to church on Sundays and were most respectable people.
My mother asked why the son didn't go to work.
"Work?" said the landlady, with a pitying smile. "None of the Ropers were ever known to work. The family is too respectable."
There was another thing I saw for the first time in that house, and that was a drunken woman.
The landlady, robbed of rent and food by the Ropers, who were too respectable to be turned out, had grown poor and dismal, and had taken to pawn her belongings for gin. I had never heard of gin before, nor ever seen a gin-palace. It was our landlady who bribed me for the first time to enter a London public-house—a flaring, reeking, typical London gin-palace. The sight and smell of the place filled me with a loathing which I have never forgotten.