Every scratch and stain showed plainly on the tables and chairs fastened to their companions in misery, odd, nameless contrivances made of boxes and cretonne, that took the place of the sofas, wardrobes, and toilet-tables of the rich.
Every mark and every dint was noted with satisfaction by the furtive eyes.

The new arrivals had nothing to boast about.
Mrs Partridge, who collected gossip and scandal as some people collect stamps, generally tired of a neighbourhood in three months, after she had learned the principal facts--how much of the Brown's money went in drink, how much the Joneses owed at the corner shop, and who was really the father of the child that the Smiths treated as a poor relation.
When she had sucked the neighbourhood dry like an orange, she took a house in another street, and Pinkey lost a day at the factory to move the furniture.
Pinkey's father was a silent, characterless man, taking the lead from his wife with admirable docility, and asking nothing from fortune but regular work and time to read the newspaper.

He had worked for the same firm since he was a boy, disliking change; but since his second marriage he had been dragged from one house to another.

Sometimes he went home to the wrong place, forgetting that they had moved.

Every week he planned another short cut to Grimshaw's works, which landed him there half an hour late.
Her mother had died of consumption when Pinkey was eleven, and two years later her father had married his housekeeper.