"How did you get it?" he asked shortly, pushing aside the cracked plate.
"Hor earned a shillin' with runnin' of errands and doing jobs. I've give the children some, and there's some over for to-morrow. It won't do to eat up all, John," as she detected a hungry gleam in his eyes.
"An' there be the rent as well," said John despondingly. "You've been a-giving more to that there child, Esther."
"Would ye wish to see her starvin' afore our faces?" asked Esther. "What of her mother?"
"Two months in jail," said John laconically. "Went to the station-house myself, an' heard it all. There was a deal o' talk, an' one man he wanted to make out as she was a hardened offender, but that wouldn't stand. She hadn't never been in trouble before, she said, and they found it was true, leastways they couldn't find no proof to the contrary. She pleaded guilty to taking the loaf, but wouldn't agree to the purse—she didn't know why she touched it at all, and she was certain sure she had never meant to take it. There was a laugh at that, an' 'twas easy to see no one believed the poor thing. She sobbed a bit, when they first brought her up, but after that she stood quiet, an' they said—one on 'em—that she was sullen, and he didn't believe as it was her first offence."
"She were as honest as the day till then," said Esther.
"They couldn't tell that, an' they didn't know how she had been nigh crazed by all she had borne. 'Twasn't done in her sober senses, I do believe. There was a long tale made out o' the purse, an' the lady wanted to prove as there was an accomplice as called off her attention, so as Mrs. Carter might whisk it off the counter where it was laid; but nobody hadn't seen no accomplice, unless 'twas little Ailie, an' when some one spoke o' the child, the poor thing called out quite indignant, an' seemed as if she couldn't bear the thought. They questioned her more then, an' she answered steady and sensible, that she had never thought what she was going to do, but she'd sold all she had, an' walked about all day a-huntin' for work, and she and her child was half-starved, an' her husband a-dyin'.
"'Aye, an' he's died in the night, has poor Jem Carter,' says I, speakin' up loud, 'died for want o' the food which none o' you gentlemen knows what it is to be without.'
"They did look shocked at that, all of 'em, an' Mrs. Carter, she gave a little cry, an' turned white-like. They was sorry for her, all on 'em. I could see that plain enough, and they didn't talk no more of puttin' off her trial to the Quarter Sessions, which was the thing as she had seemed to dread most. Some wouldn't have give her more than a month, I fancy, but one old gentleman, he muttered out that people couldn't be let steal, if they was starvin', and examples must be made.
"Mrs. Carter seemed like one nigh stupid, an' never lifted her head, not even when they told her her punishment. And the lady, whose purse it was she took, came near to crying, and said she wished the poor thing could ha' been let off altogether—she was so sorry for her, left a widow alone like that."