.
This winter was the last that Shooter's Gardens were destined to know.
The leases had all but run out; the middlemen were garnering their latest profits; in the spring there would come a wholesale demolition, and model-lodgings would thereafter occupy the site.

Meanwhile the Gardens looked their surliest; the walls stood in a perpetual black sweat; a mouldy reek came from the open doorways; the beings that passed in and out seemed soaked with grimy moisture, puffed into distortions, hung about with rotting garments.

One such was Mrs.Candy, Pennyloaf's mother.

Her clothing consisted of a single gown and a shawl made out of the fragments of an old counterpane; her clothing--with exception of the shoes on her feet, those two articles were literally all that covered her bare body.

Rage for drink was with her reaching the final mania.