“Dere Miss, my husband as been very unlucky and strained hisself again and ad to give up his work.”
Thus the poor wife starts the usual appeal when the inevitable has occurred and there is no more bread in the house. We are quite accustomed to these missives, which indeed might be stereotyped with space left for the date. Although the brother of a local policeman, this black sheep is altogether so hopeless, that, in order to keep his poor little progeny from growing sable in their turn, we have placed a lamb out here and there in divers charitable folds. Alfie, the last rescued, is a more original letter-writer than his mother. This was the document that he sent her from that happy Home for Little Boys where we trust he will grow up with an unimpeachable fleece.
“Dere Mother,—I hope this finds you well. I hope James and Vilet and Alice are well and nice and good. This is a very nice place. I hope you will tell me when you are going to call that I may be in. God bless you.
“Yours trewly,
“ALFRED.”
In yet another family, the head of which was in the habit of spending ten or twelve shillings a week regularly on cigarettes and tipple, until Nemesis overtook him in the shape of consumption, the pretty, hard-working, fiery-haired Irish wife declares without a thought of unkindness, that if she could only get him “out of the way for good” she could “do all right” for herself and her three small children.
THE VILLAGE CURSE
If ever woman has a voice in social reform, though with a few glaring exceptions legal interference with the liberty of the subject is abhorrent to Loki’s Grandmother, and she has little wish herself for suffrage or any other rage, she vows that she will vote and vote and vote for any measure that may tend to eliminate the Public House from the countryside—curse of the small home that it is! In every one of these cases there would be comfort and happiness in the family were it not for the perpetual temptation to the breadwinner.
The blacker the sheep, sad to say, the larger as a rule the family of doubtfully hued lambs. Mrs. Mutton—the letter-writer—is “not so well just now.” She is pathetically anxious that the new babe may be born alive, having lost the last one. Loki’s Ma-Ma went to see her the other day, and found her with a knowledgeable neighbour who has promised to “see her through,” and in a state of profound gloom, not unmixed, however, with a faint, pleasurable importance.
“Oh, Miss, we have just heard of such a sad thing in the village. The nurse, she’s just been up to tell me—a pore young woman, Miss, gone with her first!”