Jerry, who wore a vexed look on his handsome face, murmured deprecatingly, “Easy, easy, mate!” but the man only retorted: “Well, send ’er ’ome and don’t be rid over by yer women-folk so meeklike, man,” and the giant, anxious to keep his good footing with his comrades, bid his wife once more be gone.
“You come ’ome to yer dinner and leave talkin’ stuff as ye can’t act up to and I’ll let ye be,” was all she said, and added, catching a nasty look in the little man’s face, and seeing the ill effect it was having on her own man: “Oh, I know what ye be up to, Casey, and it won’t be the first time ye’ve played me a bad turn this way, if it be the last. But I don’t care for your bad words, not I! It be your sort as be the curse o’ my man, and I’ll save ’im from ye if I can.”
It was an ill-judged remark, and she paid dearly for it.
Away from his mates Jerry might have been docile, but supported by them he was not going to be wife-ridden.
“You go ’ome and I’ll come when I please,” repeated he doggedly.
Lucy Wood knew the mood and knew that it was idle to fight it.
“Dinner-time’s dinner-time to-day,” was all she said. “Sue and me ’as got a sight a linen to get done, and I shall clear away sharp.”
“There’s a wife for ye,” said Casey facetiously. “Don’t let’s you and me get spliced, lads! That be ’ow the women study a man!”
“I pity the one as ’ll ’ave to study you, Jim Casey!” retorted Lucy. “And may be if she’ve got to earn the money as well as feed the childer, she won’t get time to study no one much.”
She turned as she spoke, and drew her jacket together with her old pettish movement.