"Ruth, A've come to claim thee—or say good-bye."
She gripped the mantelpiece but did not answer. Her head was down, her eyes closed.
"Then it's goodbye, Joe," she said in a voice so small that she hardly recognised it herself.
He dropped his hands, darkening.
"And who'll keep thee and children now Ern's gone?"
A note of harshness had crept into his voice.
She murmured something about the Government.
He laughed at her hardly.
"The Government! What's Government ever done for the workers? They make wars: the workers pay for em. That law's old as the capitalist system. What did Government do for women and children time o South Africa?—Left em to the mercy o God and the ruling class. If your children are to trust for bread to the Government, heaven help em!"
Ruth knew that it was true. She remembered South Africa. In those days there had been a neighbour of theirs at Aldwoldston, the wife of a ploughman, a woman with six children, whose husband had been called up. Ruth had only been a girl then; but she remembered that woman, and that woman's children, and her home, and that woman's face.