Mrs. Kayll sighed wearily, and laid the pillow in its place, taking care that the hole in the much-patched cover should go underneath and out of sight.
“Tiresome boy! He is so unsettled. I’ll talk to him to-night; but it’s not much good when he has once taken a dislike to his work. He’ll never go on with it with any pleasure. I don’t know what would become of us if Jack were the same. Heigh-ho! You children are a constant anxiety to me. We really can’t afford to have Jem at home on our hands just now, when your father’s doing so badly—really I don’t think he ever did so badly before.”
“Yet,” said Madge thoughtfully, straightening the patchwork quilt, made long since by her own hands, “Jem is so good in his way, and seems much more fond of us all than either Bob or Jack, and plays with the children without teasing them like Jack does.”
“Yes, he’s a dear affectionate boy,” sighed her mother, “but I wish his affection made him consider us a little more and himself a little less.”
At this point, as they had finished the bed they were making, Madge picked up the baby—who had been sitting in a corner all the time, contentedly sucking a knob which had come off a chest of drawers, and looking on at his mother and sister while they were busy—and conveyed him into the next room, where he had again to sit with his back to the wall and amuse himself as well as he could.
“Never mind. Don’t get unhappy about it, mother dear,” said Madge in her quiet philosophical way. “As long as we’re all well, that’s the chief thing, isn’t it? Being poor isn’t half so bad as being ill.”
From which it will be seen that, like most other people, Madge saw the world with quite different eyes when she was fresh and bright in the morning, from those with which she looked at it when she was tired and depressed at night.
“Ah, it’s all very well for you, child,” said her mother, who seemed to think poverty was quite bad enough, as she looked at the girl’s worn blue dress, and remembered how hard it had been to make the children look anything like respectable for church yesterday—“It’s all very well for you, but when you come to my age you will wish you too had a little leisure, and need not grind, grind, slave and pinch from year’s end to year’s end. But there, Madgie, it’s of no use grumbling. I don’t really mind, only I get tired of it now and then.”
And she smiled, and then sighed as a few more disagreeable reflections came crowding into her mind. Her husband’s coat was very very shabby, and he ought to have another, just to keep up his character in his business. The coals were getting low, too, and the summer was drawing to its close; there was no saying how soon the days might turn cold. And there was very little food in the larder. She must really turn her thoughts to providing dinner.
“Madge,” she said suddenly, “your father has a sale to-day, and won’t be home to dinner, so we’ll not cook anything but some potatoes, because there’s a jar of nice beef dripping, and you all like potatoes and dripping.”