POVERTY
The clerk is depicted as having limited means, lacking a greatcoat and wearing a white comforter for warmth. This suggests a claim of poverty or financial hardship.
CLERK
The clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no greatcoat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blind man's-buff.