"Ah—then I'm come to the wrong place," said Molly. "Look here, Mrs. Stevens!"
She held out a wan baby, with claw-like fingers and wizened face—a face that might have belonged to some old man.
"And Jack 'll stand seeing that! And he'll stand knowing that the child's being killed! It'll die soon! And I tell him so! And he won't believe, till it's too late! If ever I go and work him up again to this sort of thing, I'll—"
Molly caught her breath in a sob. But for her "working up," as she rightly termed it, her husband might never have joined the strike. He was a man slow to decide, difficult to move; but when once he had decided on some new course of action, he was equally resolute in holding, to it. Molly had given the impulse. She could not now undo her own work.
"How long does your husband s'pose it'll last?" asked Mrs. Hicks, after a pause.
"I don't know. Nobody don't know," said Martha wearily. "Till the masters give in, or till the men see they've no hope of getting their way. And they don't seem like to see that, so long as Mr. Pope goes on talking at them."
"I wish Pope was at the bottom of the sea. That's what I wish," said Mrs. Hicks, slowly rising.
Martha's drooping manner and empty cupboard did not tempt her to a longer stay. Wrapping the baby in her torn shawl, she went out again.
"Mother, how dreadful bad Mrs. Hicks' baby does look," said Bobbie.
Martha could not speak. She could only think how changed were the faces of her own children—of little Harry especially. Bobbie's mind seemed to go in the same direction.