"What's up?" called an agitated voice from outside. "Hold on, mother! Give the boy a chance."
Some one rattled the door.
"Go about your business!" cried Mrs. Caspar. "There's a pair of you!"
Her anger exhausted and shame possessing her, she was going out into the yard to shelter herself in the little shed against the Workhouse wall, when Alf's sudden scream stayed her.
"Mum!—down't leave me!—he'll kill me!"
She turned to mark a white flare burning in the face of her elder son.
She had seen it before and had been afraid.
When Ern looked like that he ceased to be Ern: he became transfigured—yes, and terrible: like, she sometimes thought, the cavalier in the picture must have been in anger.
"Take them sopping duds off," she said quietly, "and then go up and put your Sundays on."
Half an hour later Ern, wearing dry clothes, entered the study.