Raymond by John Lang

Raymond's situation was now quite desperate. His watch, the small remainder of his books, and even his wife's piano, were disposed of, and nothing could he call his own save the clothes on his back. Still he struggled with his lot, while, unknown to him, Julia tried to earn a trifle by her needle, and would frequently, when her husband and her child were asleep, sit up toiling till long past midnight, the tears dropping fast upon her work. These labours, so unsuited to one of her delicate frame, made fearful inroads on her constitution; nevertheless, she persevered in them, while her landlady, who had originally suggested the idea, contrived to procure her a few shillings weekly, by disposing of her work to a fancy milliner in the neighbourhood.

On his part, Raymond determined to make one last effort to retrieve himself, and with his only remaining guinea renewed his applications in the newspapers for private pupils. For a brief while, a faint gleam of sunshine illumined his prospects. He obtained a situation as tutor to two boys, sons of a rich stockbroker at Highbury, whither he was forced to trudge on foot four times a-week; but after he had given about a dozen lessons, he was dismissed by the broker's upstart wife, who treated him as a sort of upper butler, and took a rooted dislike to him, because he refused to be overwhelmed by a sense of her paramount dignity, and was too obtuse to discover in her sons the beauty of an Antinous, combined with the precocious genius of a Crichton.