His eyes were tightly closed and an expression of the most intense misery pervaded his long face.
Mrs Starvem, being so fat that she knew if she once knelt down she would never be able to get up again, compromised by sitting on the extreme edge of her chair, resting her elbows on the back of the seat in front of her, and burying her face in her hands.

It was a very large face, but her hands were capacious enough to receive it.
In a seat at the back of the hall knelt a pale-faced, weary-looking little woman about thirty-six years of age, very shabbily dressed, who had come in during the singing.

This was Mrs White, the caretaker, Bert White's mother.

When her husband died, the committee of the Chapel, out of charity, gave her this work, for which they paid her six shillings a week.

Of course, they could not offer her full employment; the idea was that she could get other work as well, charing and things of that kind, and do the Chapel work in between.