“A jolly lot you ever did hanything else,” began the aunt afresh, but the neighbour stopped her mouth.
“Now you go ’ome, Nat, you go on ’ome,” reiterated she to the boy; and “Can’t ye see as yer on’y aggrawatin’ the lad, Mary Ann?” she whispered to the woman. “Let ’im be, do! Maybe ’e misses his ’ome and his pore mother more than you thinks for.”
But Nat laughed as he blew the ashes from his pipe.
“Ye needn’t trouble to speak up for me, marm,” he sneered. “Lord, she don’t ’urt me, bless you,” and he snapped his fingers in the direction of his relative. “A precious sight I ever cared for the women-folk’s jaw. Oh, yes, I’ll go ’ome,” and something that somehow did not belong to the scowl flitted across the passionate young face that self-indulgence had so sorrowfully marred. “I’ll go ’ome! But where I goes there I bides—ye ’ear that? No one ain’t got no right to interfere wi’ me. I won’t never darken your doors no more, and if I’m a-goin’ to the devil I’ll go my own way.”
He stuck his cap on the back of his head again and his hands in his pockets, and lounged up the road singing a scrap of a low song in a louder voice than he could keep quite steady.
“It’s a pity, so it is,” murmured the stout woman, looking after him. “There was the makin’s of a nice lad in ’im once, I’ll be sworn.”
“You’re a new comer to the place,” retorted Mary Ann, “and that’s all you knows! If ’is pore mother didn’t fret the very guts out of ’erself a-tryin’ to bring ’im up respeckable! But the devil of ’is father were in ’im—that’s where it was. The low brute that man was! And died same as ’e lived. Found on the road—i’stead o’ dyin’ respeckable in ’is bed! As if ’e ’adn’t ha’ done the woman injury enough! Why—there was a Crowner’s inquest and all! But, Lor’, when all was said and done, I declare I niver spent a comfortabler ’alf hour than when I seed ’em nail ’im down! For, ye see, I says to myself: ‘Clara ’ll take on a bit, but she’s well rid on ’im. She can work to bring one up, and the boy ’ll soon be able to work for ’er.’ Lord, I didn’t reckon as ’e’d be a wuss devil nor ’is father, bad luck to ’im!”
“May be ’is pore mother spoiled ’im, being but the one, so to speak,” said the other half apologetically.
“Spoiled ’im!” laughed the other, preparing to shoulder her burthen again. “I reckon she did! Many’s the time I swore she’d be punished for it!”
“Well, I s’pose she was,” said the neighbour simply. “There, pore soul, I’m sorry for ’er.”