"Won't you cook this for me, missis?"
But it was not until about nine in the evening that the real business of the house began, and it continued till one, when the last straggler knocked for admittance. The house lived on its beds. The best rooms were sometimes let for eight shillings a night, and there were four beds which were let at fourpence a night in the cellar under the area where Esther stood by the great copper washing sheets, blankets, and counterpanes, when she was not cleaning the rooms upstairs. There was a double-bedded room underneath the kitchen, and over the landings, wherever a space could be found, the landlord, who was clever at carpentering work, had fitted up some sort of closet place that could be let as a bedroom. The house was a honeycomb. The landlord slept under the roof, and a corner had been found for his housekeeper, a handsome young woman, at the end of the passage. Esther and the children—the landlord was a widower—slept in the coffee-room upon planks laid across the tops of the high backs of the benches where the customers mealed. Mattresses and bedding were laid on these planks and the sleepers lay, their faces hardly two feet from the ceiling. Esther slept with the baby, a little boy of five; the two big boys slept at the other end of the room by the front door. The eldest was about fifteen, but he was only half-witted; and he helped in the housework, and could turn down the beds and see quicker than any one if the occupant had stolen sheet or blanket. Esther always remembered how he would raise himself up in bed in the early morning, rub the glass, and light a candle so that he could be seen from below. He shook his head if every bed was occupied, or signed with his fingers the prices of the beds if they had any to let.
The landlord was a tall, thin man, with long features and hair turning grey. He was very quiet, and Esther was surprised one night at the abruptness with which he stopped a couple who were going upstairs.
"Is that your wife?" he said.
"Yes, she's my wife all right."
"She don't look very old."
"She's older than she looks."
Then he said, half to Esther, half to his housekeeper, that it was hard to know what to do. If you asked them for their marriage certificates they'd be sure to show you something. The housekeeper answered that they paid well, and that was the principal thing. But when an attempt was made to steal the bedclothes the landlord and his housekeeper were more severe. As Esther was about to let a most respectable woman out of the front door, the idiot boy called down the stairs, "Stop her! There's a sheet missing."
"Oh, what in the world is all this? I haven't got your sheet. Pray let me pass; I'm in a hurry."
"I can't let you pass until the sheet is found."