Mrs. Cragg on the day after the funeral was not very agreeable. She asked her husband no questions, but glowered sulkily. He told her after breakfast that Pattie was coming before night, and inquired where she was to sleep.
"How am I to know?" was Mrs. Cragg's reply. "I don't keep rooms for taking in of riff-raff."
"Pattie Dale is no more riff-raff than you and I are!" Cragg was roused to reply firmly. Things had reached a point when he would either have to set his foot down firmly, or to give way and break his word.
"I know what she is. I knew it the first moment I set eyes on those two."
"My dear, it really does not matter what you may imagine them to have been. Mr. Dale is dead, and I have—I intend to provide for his child, at all events until she can do for herself."
"You have—what?"
"I have made up my mind to do as much as that." Cragg wished now that he had been more open.
"There's the workhouse."
"She will not go to the workhouse so long as I can prevent it."
"She could get a place, I suppose—if she ain't too grand."