things. You'd better go to the pub. opposite and 'ave three 'aporth of brandy.'
'They seemed rather painful cases,' said Mr Clinton, in a low voice.
'Oh, it was a slack day to-day. Nothing like what it is usually this time of year.'
'They all died of starvation--starvation, and nothing else.'
'I suppose they did, more or less,' replied the officer.
'D'you 'ave many cases like that?'
'Starvation cases? Lor' bless you! on a 'eavy day we'll 'ave 'alf a dozen, easy.'
'Oh!' said Mr Clinton.
'Well, I must be getting on with my work,' said the officer--they were standing on the doorstep and he looked at the public-house opposite, but Mr Clinton paid no further attention to him. He began to walk slowly away citywards.
'Well, you are a rummy old file!' said the coroner's officer.
But presently a mist came before Mr Clinton's eyes, everything seemed suddenly extraordinary, he had an intense pain and he felt himself falling. He opened his eyes slowly, and found himself sitting on a doorstep; a policeman was shaking him, asking what his name was. A woman standing by was holding his top hat; he noticed that his trousers were muddy, and mechanically he pulled out his handkerchief and began to wipe them.
He looked vacantly at the policeman asking questions. The woman asked him if he was better. He motioned her to give him his hat; he put it feebly on his head and, staggering to his feet, walked unsteadily away.
The rain drizzled down impassively, and cabs passing swiftly splashed up the yellow mud....
VI
Mr Clinton went back to the office; it was his boast that for ten years he had never missed a day. But he was dazed; he did his work mechanically, and so distracted was he that, on going home in the evening, he forgot to remove his paper cuffs, and his wife remarked upon them while they were supping. Mrs Clinton was a short, stout person, with an appearance of immense determination; her black, shiny hair was parted in the middle--the parting was broad and very white--severely brushed back and gathered into a little knot at the back of the head; her face was red and strongly lined, her eyes spirited, her nose aggressive, her mouth resolute. Everyone has some one procedure which seems most exactly to suit him--a slim youth bathing in a shaded stream, an alderman standing with his back to the fire and his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat--and Mrs Clinton expressed her complete self, exhibiting every trait and attribute, on Sunday in church, when she sat in the front pew self-reliantly singing the hymns in the wrong key. It was then that she seemed more than ever the personification of a full stop. Her morals were above suspicion, and her religion Low Church.
'They've moved into the second 'ouse down,' she remarked to her husband. 'And Mrs Tilly's taken 'er summer curtains down at last.' Mrs Clinton spent most of her time in watching her neighbours' movements, and she and her husband always discussed at the supper-table the events of the day, but this time he took no notice of her remark. He pushed away his cold meat with an expression of disgust.
'You don't seem up to the mark to-night, Jimmy,' said Mrs Clinton.
'I served on a jury to-day in place of the governor, and it gave me rather a turn.'
'Why, was there anything particular?'
Mr Clinton crumbled up his bread, rolling it about on the table.
'Only some poor things starved to death.'
Mrs Clinton shrugged her shoulders. 'Why couldn't they go to the workhouse, I wonder? I've no patience with people like that.'
Mr Clinton looked at her for a moment, then rose from the table. 'Well, dear, I think I'll get to bed; I daresay I shall be all right in the morning.'
'That's right,' said Mrs Clinton; 'you get to bed and I'll bring you something 'ot. I expect you've got a bit of a chill and a good perspiration'll do you a world of good.'
She mixed bad whisky with harmless water, and stood over her husband while he patiently drank the boiling mixture. Then she piled a couple of extra blankets on him and went down stairs to have her usual nip, 'Scotch and cold,' before going to bed herself.
All night Mr Clinton tossed from side to side; the heat was unbearable, and he threw off the clothes. His restlessness became so great that he got out of bed and walked up and down the room--a pathetically ridiculous object in his flannel nightshirt, from which his thin legs protruded grotesquely. Going back to bed, he fell into an uneasy sleep; but waking or sleeping, he had before his eyes the faces of the three horrible bodies he had seen at the mortuary. He could not blot out the image of the thin, baby face with the pale, open eyes, the white face drawn and thin, hideous in its starved, dead shapelessness. And he saw the drawn, wrinkled face of the old man, with the stubbly beard; looking at it, he felt the long pain of hunger, the agony of the hopeless morrow. But he shuddered with terror at the thought of the drowned girl with the sunken eyes, the horrible discolouration of putrefaction; and Mr Clinton buried his face in his pillow, sobbing, sobbing very silently so as not to wake his wife....
The morning came at last and found him feverish and parched, unable to move. Mrs Clinton sent for the doctor, a slow, cautious Scotchman, in whose wisdom Mrs Clinton implicitly relied, since he always agreed with her own idea of her children's ailments. This prudent gentleman ventured to assert that Mr Clinton had caught cold and had something wrong with his lungs. Then, promising to send medicine and come again next day, went off on his rounds. Mr Clinton grew worse; he became delirious. When his wife, smoothing his pillow, asked him how he felt, he looked at her with glassy eyes.
'Lor' bless you!' he muttered, 'on a 'eavy day we'll 'ave 'alf a dozen, easy.'
'What's this he's talking about?' asked the doctor, next day.
''E was serving on a jury the day before yesterday, and my opinion is that it's got on 'is brain,' answered Mrs Clinton.
'Oh, that's nothing. You needn't worry about that. I daresay it'll turn to clothes or religion before he's done.
