"I want to send Dick up to the farm; Mrs. Hayes will give me some milk for it, I know," replied his wife, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact tone.
"'ME LIKES 'OU,' SHE SAID." [See page 40.
"And you'd send Dick to that place when I said they shouldn't go near the house," said her husband, angrily. "Take the fish and cook it for supper. Not a bit o' my fish shall they have."
"But the milk. What am I to do for the milk for the child now she's ill?"
"What have yer done afore?" demanded her husband; and the poor woman was obliged to confess that she had taken milk from the man as he went past in his cart to the village each day since the child had been there. "She couldn't do wi'out milk," protested Mrs. Coomber.
"How do you know she couldn't?" said her husband. "What business have you to spend money for milk—what business have you wi' money at all?" he inquired, suspiciously; for he saw in this wastefulness a cause for the recent strange scarcity of whisky; and he felt he had been deeply wronged. His quarrel with Hayes had also been disregarded, and this made him further angry with his wife, and he strictly charged her never to have any more dealings with any of the farm people.
"We can live very well without milk," he said. "I will feed the little 'un, and you'll see she can eat fish and bread as well as the rest of us."
It was useless for Mrs. Coomber to protest against this; she knew if her husband made up his mind to do anything he would do it; but she almost dreaded supper-time coming, for she could not tell how Tiny would like the proposed change in her nurse and diet.
But as it happened the little girl was very pleased to be lifted out of bed and seated on Coomber's knee at the table.