"Pray go on," said Basil, feeling that it would be churlish to check her.
"It's a comfort, sir," continued Mrs. Philpott, "to open one's heart. It doesn't make me melancholy to look back to those days, though my spirit was almost broke at the time; I'm proud and grateful that we've tided them over, with the help of God and the good friend He sent us. 'Mother,' says Philpott to me, 'I'm on my beam ends. We're in a wood, and there's no way out of it.' 'Don't you go on like that, father,' I says; 'you keep on trying, and you'll see a way out presently.' For I'm one of that sort of women, sir, if you won't mind my saying as much, who never give in and don't know when they're beat. I don't mean to say I don't suffer; I do, but I put a brave face on it and never: say die. 'You keep on trying, father,' I says. 'Now haven't I kept on trying?' says he. 'For eight weeks I've answered every advertisement in the paper, and applied for a job in hundreds and hundreds of places without getting the smell of one. I'm ashamed to look you in the face, mother, for if it wasn't for you our boy would starve.' We only had one then, sir, and as for being ashamed to look me in the face Philpott ought to have been ashamed to say as much. All that I did was to get a day's charing wherever I could, and a bit of washing when I heard there was a chance of it, and that was how we kept the wolf from the door. But I fell ill, sir, and couldn't stir out of doors, and was so weak that I couldn't stand at the wash-tub without fainting away. Things were bad indeed then, and Philpott took on so that I did lose heart a bit. Well, sir, when we'd parted with everything we could raise a penny upon, when we didn't know where we should get our next meal from though it was only dry bread, heaven sent us a friend. An old friend of Philpott's, sir, that he hadn't seen for years, and that he'd been fond of and kind to when he was a young man, before he kept company with me. Philpott had lent him a couple of pound, and he'd gone off to America, and, now, sir, now, in the very nick of time, he came home to pay it back. Did you ever see the sun shine as bright as bright can be in a dark room at ten o'clock at night--for that was the time when Philpott's friend opened the door, and cried, 'Does Mr. Philpott live here?' It shone in our room, sir, though there was never a candle to light it up, and Philpott was sitting by me with his head in his hands. Philpott starts up in a fright--when people are in the state we were brought to the least unexpected, thing makes their hearts beat with fear--he starts up and says, 'Who are you?' 'That's Philpott's voice,' says our friend. 'I'd know it among a thousand; but don't you know mine, old fellow? And what are you sitting in the dark for?' Then he tells us who he is, and Philpott takes hold of his hand and says he's glad to see his old friend--which he couldn't, sir--and, ashamed of his poverty, pulls him out of the room. He comes back almost directly, and stoops over me and kisses me, and whispers that heaven has sent us a friend when most we needed one, and I feel my dear man's tears on my face. Then, sir, if you'll believe me it seemed to me as if the sun was shining in our dark room, and all the trouble in my mind flew straight away. From that time all went well with us; it was right about face in real earnest. Philpott's friend had another friend who got my husband in the force, and now we've got a bit of money put by for a rainy day, and don't need the rent for a couple of empty rooms."