"Eh, I don't know. He's taken a bundle in the blue handkerchief, and says he's not coming back."
"What shall we do?" cried the boy.
"Eh, never trouble, he won't go far."
"But if he doesn't come back," wailed Annie.
And she and William retired to the sofa and wept. Mrs. Morel sat and laughed.
"You pair of gabeys!" she exclaimed. "You'll see him before the night's out."
But the children were not to be consoled. Twilight came on. Mrs. Morel grew anxious from very weariness. One part of her said, it would be a relief to see the last of him; another part fretted because of keeping the children; and inside her, as yet, she could not quite let him go. At the bottom, she knew very well he could not go.
When she went down to the coal-place at the end of the garden, however, she felt something behind the door. So she looked. And there in the dark lay the big blue bundle. She sat on a piece of coal in front of the bundle and laughed. Every time she saw it, so fat and yet so ignominious, slunk into its corner in the dark, with its ends flopping like dejected ears from the knots, she laughed again. She was relieved.
Mrs. Morel sat waiting. He had not any money, she knew, so if he stopped he was running up a bill. She was very tired of him—tired to death. He had not even the courage to carry his bundle beyond the yard-end.
As she meditated, at about nine o'clock, he opened the door and came in, slinking, and yet sulky. She said not a word. He took off his coat, and slunk to his armchair, where he began to take off his boots.