'No, no,' Miss Levering shook her head, explaining to her maid. 'I don't doubt the poor soul has had some difficulty, some hard experience, but she can't be quoting the law correctly.'
Nevertheless, in the halting words of the woman who had suffered, if only from misapprehension upon so grave a point, there was a rude eloquence that overbore the lady's incredulity. The crowd hissed such gross unfairness.
'If women 'ad 'ave made the laws, do you think we'd 'ave 'ad one like that disgracin' the statue-book? No! And in all sorts o' ways it looks like the law seems to think a child's got only one parent. I'd like to tell them gentlemen that makes the laws that (it may be different in their world, I only speak for my little corner of it)—but in 'Ackney it looks like when a child's got only one parent, that one is the mother.'
'Sy, let up, old gal! there's some o' them young ones ain't 'ad a show yet.'
'About time you had a rest, mother!'
'If the mother dies,' she was saying, 'wot 'appens?'
'Let's 'ope she goes to heaven.'
'Wot 'appens to the pore little 'ome w'en the mother dies? Why, the pore little home is sold up, and the children's scattered among relations, or sent out so young to work it makes yer 'art ache. But if a man dies—you see it on every side, in 'Ackney—the widow takes in sewin', or goes out charin', or does other people's washin' as well as 'er own, or she mykes boxes—something er ruther, any'ow, that makes it possible fur 'er to keep 'er 'ome together. You don't see the mother scatterin' the little family w'en the only parent the law seems to reconize is dead and gone. I say——'
'You've a been sayin' it for a good while. You must be needin' a cup o' tea yerself.'
'In India I'm told they burn the widows. In England they do worse than that. They keep them half alive.'