“Yes, but it ain’t your own child, and stepmothers has a bad name, see? There’s that Jew woman next door. She saw you when you took the clothes’ rope to little Margery last washin’-day. She spoke to me about it and again to-day about the food.”
“What’s the matter with the food? The greedy little bastards! They had a ’unch of bread each when I ’ad my dinner. A bit of real starvin’ would do them no ’arm, and I would ’ave less sauce.”
“What, has Willie sauced you?”
“Yes, when ’e woke up.”
“After you’d dropped the hot sealin’-wax on him?”
“Well, I did it for ’is good, didn’t I? It was to cure ’im of a bad ’abit.”
“Wot did he say?”
“Cursed me good and proper, ’e did. All about his mother—wot ’is mother would do to me. I’m dam’ well sick of ’is mother!”
“Don’t say too much about Amy. She was a good woman.”
“So you say now, Silas Linden, but by all accounts you ’ad a queer way of showin’ it when she was alive.”