“I—I only want you to go outside for a bit, Jack,” said Dick, with his lips quivering. “Go out and play, my boy.”
“But,” said the boy suspiciously, “you won’t cut off, master, and leave me. Fain larks, you know.”
“No, no, no, my lad. Go and stop out in the court.” The boy gazed keenly in his face, and then, with a suspicious look in his eyes, went outside.
“It seems to me as the poorer people is the fonder they get of you, mother,” said Dick pitifully. “Oh, my gal, what have we done, that we should be so poor? Here have I worked early and late for the few pence we drag together, and can’t get on. It’s because I’m a wretched bungler, and it would have been better if I’d never been born.”
“Dick, dear Dick,” whispered his wife, as he sat down despairingly, and leaned his head upon his hand, while she bent over him. “Don’t give way. I can bear anything but that.”
“I do try, my gal, harder than you think,” he groaned; “and when I’m making most of a fool of myself, and laughing and singing, it’s because I’ve got such a gnawing here.”
He raised his hand to strike his chest, but it was caught by Jessie, who drew it round her neck as she knelt at his feet.
“And I’ve been so much trouble instead of a comfort, father; and it’s all my fault,” she sobbed.
“Your fault, my precious!” he cried, as he took her piteous face in his hands and kissed it a dozen times over—“your fault! Why, you’ve been like sunshine in the place ever since you used to sit on your little stool there, and play with the bits of leather, and build houses with mother’s cotton-reels. Your fault, my darling! There—there—there! It’s all over, mother, and the sun’s coming out again. It won’t rain any more to-day.”
There was a pause here, and the little place was very silent as the cries of the children at play floated in.