“God bless you, my dear! I hope you will;” and the next minute I was going downstairs, calling myself an old fool.
They thought I didn’t know at home, but I did. There was the wife going over and over again to Bennett’s Place; and all sorts of little nice things were made and taken there. I often used to see them talking about it, but I took no notice; and that artful scoundrel, my boy Luke, used to pay the half-crown every week out of his own pocket, after pretending to go and fetch it from the widow’s.
And all the time I told myself I didn’t like it, for I could see that Luke was changed, and always thinking of that girl—a girl not half good enough for him. I remembered being poor myself, and I hated poverty, and I used to speak harshly to Luke and the wife, and feel very bitter.
At last came an afternoon when I knew there was something wrong. The wife had gone out directly after dinner, saying she was going to see a sick woman—I knew who it was, bless you!—and Luke was fidgeting about, not himself; and at last he took his hat and went out.
“They might have confided in me,” I said bitterly, but all the time I knew that I wouldn’t let them. “They’ll be spending money—throwing it away. I know they’ve spent pounds on them already.”
At last I got in such a way that I called down our foreman, left him in charge, and took my hat and went after them.
Everything was very quiet in Bennett’s Place, for a couple of dirty dejected-looking women, one of whom was in arrears to me, had sent the children that played in the court right away because of the noise, and were keeping guard so that they should not come back.
I went up the stairs softly, and all was very still, only as I got nearer to the room I could hear a bitter wailing cry, and then I opened the door gently and went in.
Luke was there, standing with his head bent by the sewing machine; the wife sat in a chair, and on her knees, with her face buried in the wife’s lap, was the poor girl, crying as if her little heart would break; while on the bed, with all the look of pain gone out of her face, lay the widow—gone to meet her husband where pain and sorrow are no more.
I couldn’t see very plainly, for there was a mist-like before my eyes; but I know Luke flushed up as he took a step forward, as if to protect the girl, and the wife looked at me in a frightened way.