“You could have me dad’s bed,” suggested Ben doubtfully.
“Thank you, I will. Where do you think your dad may have gone to?”
“I dunno,” said Ben simply.
“Does he often go away like this?”
“No. He never done it afore—not like this. And he ain’t gone on the mop, because he ain’t no fuddlecap, not me dad. And if he don’t come back, they’ll put me on the Parish.”
“I expect he’ll come back,” said John soothingly. “Have you got any other relations? Brothers? Uncles?”
“I got a brother. Leastways, unless he’s been drownded, I have. He was pressed. I shouldn’t wonder if I was never to see him no more.”
“Lord, yes, of course you will!”
“Well, I don’t want to,” said Ben frankly. “He’s a proper jobbernoll, that’s what he is. Else they wouldn’t never have snabbled him. Me dad says so.”
If Ben possessed other relatives, he did not know of them. His mother seemed to have died some years before; and it soon became apparent that he clung to his father less from affection than from a lively dread of being thrown on the Parish. He was convinced that if this should befall him he would be sent to work at one of the foundries in Sheffield. He lived near enough to Sheffield to know what miseries were endured by the swarms of stunted children who were employed from the age of seven in the big manufacturing towns; and it was not surprising that this fate should seem so terrible to him. There was only one worse fate known to him, and this, before long, he was to confide to John.