"And so he was then, grannie. But just look at him now!"
The man moved uneasily, but without bending his outstretched legs. The fact was, that since the death of the child he had so far taken to drink that he was not unfrequently the worse for it; which had been a rare occurrence before.
"It ain't my fault," he said, "when work ain't a-goin,' if I don't dress her like a duchess. I'm as proud to see my wife rigged out as e'er a man on 'em; and that she know! and when she cast the contrairy up to me, I'm blowed if I could keep my hands off on her. She ain't the woman I took her for, miss. She 'ave a temper!"
"I don't doubt it," said Marion. "Temper is a troublesome thing with all of us, and makes us do things we're sorry for afterwards. You're sorry for striking her—ain't you, now?"
There was no response. Around the sullen heart silence closed again. Doubtless he would have given much to obliterate the fact, but he would not confess that he had been wrong. We are so stupid, that confession seems to us to fix the wrong upon us, instead of throwing it, as it does, into the depths of the eternal sea.
"I may have my temper," said the woman, a little mollified at finding, as she thought, that Miss Clare took her part; "but here am I, slaving from morning to night to make both ends meet, and goin' out every job I can get a-washin' or a-charin', and never 'avin' a bit of fun from year's end to year's end, and him off to his club, as he calls it!—an' it's a club he's like to blow out my brains with some night, when he comes home in a drunken fit; for it's worse and worse he'll get, miss, like the rest on 'em, till no woman could be proud, as once I was, to call him hers. And when I do go out to tea for once in a way, to be jeered at by them as is no better nor no worse 'n myself, acause I ain't got a husband as cares enough for me to dress me decent!—that do stick i' my gizzard. I do dearly love to have neighbors think my husband care a bit about me, let-a-be 'at he don't, one hair; and when he send me out like that"—
Here she broke down afresh.
"Why didn't ye stop at home then? I didn't tell ye to go," he said fiercely, calling her a coarse name.
"Richard," said Marion, "such words are not fit for me to hear, still less for your own wife."
"Oh! never mind me: I'm used to sich," said the woman spitefully.