‘Why, the money-letters! Don’t I know the feel of them—directed to master this and master that, and with a seal and a card, and half a sovereign, or maybe a whole one, under it; and such lots as they gets before the holidays—that’s to go home, you see.’
‘Well, it’s a shame such little impudent rogues should get so much without ever doing a stroke of work for it.’
‘I say, Harold, don’t ye never put one of they letters in your pocket?’
‘For shame, Dick!’
‘Ha! I shall know where to come when I wants half a sovereign or so!’
‘No, you won’t.’
It was only these last two or three speeches that reached the cottage at all clearly; and they were followed by a sound as if Harold had fallen upon one of the others, and they were holding him off, with halloos and shouts of hoarse laughing, which broke Alfred’s sleep, and his voice came down-stairs with a startled cry of ‘Mother! Mother! what is that?’ She ran up-stairs in haste, and Ellen threw the door open. The sudden display of the light silenced the noisy boys; and Harold came slowly up the garden-path, pretty certain of a scolding, and prepared to feel it as little as he could help.
‘Well, Master, a nice sort of a way of spending a Sunday evening this!’ began Ellen; ‘and coming hollaing up the lane, just on purpose to wake poor Alfred, when he’s so ill!’
‘I’m sure I never meant to wake him.’
‘Then what did you bring all that good-for-nothing set roaring and shouting up the road for? And just this evening, too, when one would have thought you would we have cared for poor Mother and Alfred,’ said she, crying.