"I hope your mother be having good trade?" asked Noah Pearn. "I hear that the Christmas markets touched high water this year."
"All we could wish," admitted Jarratt. "She's worked like ten women this winter."
"Very aggravating 'tis to hear it—to me," suddenly declared a sad-looking, silent man, in a corner. "There's my wife might be doing the very same; but rabbit it! she've never got time for nothing now. We've gived up our market stall altogether. I've got to do everything of late days. I never thought she'd have changed like that—else I'd never have took her."
"How many children have you got, Samuel?" asked Mr. Huggins.
"But one," said Samuel gloomily.
"There 'tis!" cried the ancient. "They'm all the same with one—'tis the commonest thing. But wait till she've brought 'e half-a-dozen or more, and she'll have time for everything—market included."
"'Tis strange but true, like other ways of Providence," declared Taverner; "but I've marked it in my own family, that one child be far more trouble than six; an' takes far more time. 'Tis the want of practice, no doubt."
Men came and went. Presently Weekes prepared to depart, and put on his coat again.
"Where's my father to-night?" he asked. "'Tis past his hour. He had rather a dressing down afore mother started this morning. I should have thought he'd have come for an extra glass in consequence."
"He never takes but four half pints of a Saturday night, year in, year out," answered Mr. Pearn. "Sometimes he'll top up with a thimble of sloe gin, if the weather's harsh; but that's his outside allowance."