Times were hard with Mrs. Aspinall. Two coppers and two half-pence in her purse were threepence to her now, and the absence of one of the half-pence made a difference to her, especially in Paddy's market―that eloquent advertisement of a young city's sin and poverty and rotten wealth―on Saturday night. She counted the coppers as anxiously and nervously as a thirsty dead-beat does. And her house was 'falling down on her' and her troubles, and she couldn't get the landlord to do a 'han'stern' to it.
At last, after persistent agitation on her part (but not before a portion of the plastered ceiling had fallen and severely injured one of her children) the landlord caused two men to be sent to 'effect necessary repairs' to the three square, dingy, plastered holes―called 'three rooms and a kitchen'―for the privilege of living in which, and calling it 'my place,' she paid ten shillings a week.
Previously the agent, as soon as he had received the rent and signed the receipt, would cut short her reiterated complaints―which he privately called her 'clack'―by saying that he'd see to it, he'd speak to the landlord; and, later on, that he had spoken to him, or could do nothing more in the matter―that it wasn't his business. Neither it was, to do the agent justice. It was his business to collect the rent, and thereby earn the means of paying his own. He had to keep a family on his own account, by assisting the Fat Man to keep his at the expense of people―especially widows with large families, or women, in the case of Jones's Alley―who couldn't afford it without being half-starved, or running greater and un-
