“Nice things,” said Dan, balancing his spoon on the edge of his basin, and smacking his hungry lips; “chickens, and jellies, and pies, and such like.”
“Oh,” said Becky, with a patient sigh. “Well, we shan’t have no money at all now, so we can’t get any of ’em.”
“I shall get six shillings a week when I begin work,” said Dan; “and there’s what mother gets charing. But then there’s the rent, you see, and father getting nothing—”
He broke off, for the door opened, and Tuvvy himself appeared with his basket of tools on his shoulder. The children looked at him silently as he flung himself into a chair, but his wife began immediately in a tone of mild reproachfulness.
“Yer supper’s been waiting this ever so long, and it wasn’t much to boast of to begin with, but there—I s’pose we may be thankful to get a bit of dry bread now.”
She poured the contents of the saucepan into a dish, sighing and lamenting over it as she did so.
“’Tain’t what I’ve been used to, as was always brought up respectable, and have done my duty to the children. And there’s the doctor’s bill—I s’pose he won’t come to see Becky no more till that’s paid—and there she is on her back a cripple, as you may call it, for life p’r’aps. And what is it you mean to turn to, now you’ve lost a good place?”
As long as there was a mouthful of his supper left, Tuvvy preserved a strict silence; but when his plate was empty, he pushed it away, and said grimly, “Gaffer’s goin’ to let me stop on.”
“Stop on!” repeated Mrs Tuvvy. She stopped short in her progress across the kitchen, and let the empty plate she was carrying fall helplessly at her side. “Stop on!” she repeated.
“Ain’t I said so?” answered Tuvvy, pressing down the tobacco in his pipe with his thumb.