"Yes, indeed." Emily could not but think how soon she herself had learned that lesson.
"Of course I'd do anything for Sexty,—the father of my bairns, and has always been a good husband to me. You don't know him, of course, but I do. A right good man at bottom;—but so weak!"
"If he,—if he,—injures his health, shouldn't you talk to him quietly about it?"
"It isn't the drink as is the evil, Mrs. Lopez, but that which makes him drink. He's not one as goes a mucker merely for the pleasure. When things are going right he'll sit out in our arbour at home, and smoke pipe after pipe, playing with the children, and one glass of gin and water cold will see him to bed. Tobacco, dry, do agree with him, I think. But when he comes to three or four goes of hot toddy, I know it's not as it should be."
"You should restrain him, Mrs. Parker."
"Of course I should;—but how? Am I to walk off with the bottle and disgrace him before the servant girl? Or am I to let the children know as their father takes too much? If I was as much as to make one fight of it, it'd be all over Ponder's End that he's a drunkard;—which he ain't. Restrain him;—oh, yes! If I could restrain that gambling instead of regular business! That's what I'd like to restrain."
"Does he gamble?"
"What is it but gambling that he and Mr. Lopez is a-doing together? Of course, ma'am, I don't know you, and you are different from me. I ain't foolish enough not to know all that. My father stood in Smithfield and sold hay, and your father is a gentleman as has been high up in the Courts all his life. But it's your husband is a-doing this."
"Oh, Mrs. Parker!"
"He is then. And if he brings Sexty and my little ones to the workhouse, what'll be the good then of his guano and his gum?"