“That’s true,” put in my master. “A man, though he be a flue-faker, don’t cut off his nose to spite his face, missus.”
She made no answer, staring fixedly at the corpse.
“He were my seventh,” she said. “He made no cry when you come and took him away from me—a yellow-haired devil. Did he cry for his mammy, chokin’ up in the dark there?”
“No,” said the man—“an unnat’ral son!”
She threw up her hands with a frightful gesture.
“I could have borne it if he had—I could have borne it, and cut my throat. What were you doing with him?”
The sweep hesitated; but my master took the word from him.
“It’s a question of his slops, missus.” (He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at me, where I stood in the background paralysed with terror.) “Half a bull or nothing, and you and him to share.”
The woman put her arms akimbo.
“Ho, indeed!” she said. “And where does he come in?”