Yet in spite of all Nutkin's efforts, he had been unable to dislodge old Humphrey from the miserable hut. The rent of a shilling a week was paid punctually by Ruth, who would rather have gone without food than omit its regular settlement, since nothing else could keep her drunken husband and herself from the parish workhouse. The farmer, who held a lease of the lime-kiln and the hut, found her work on his farmstead and showed her some little favour. So all the keeper could do was to suspect and to watch, ready to take advantage of any trespass that could be punished by the law.
For thirteen years now Ruth had worked upon the Willows Farm; and many a hot summer day had Ishmael, when a baby, lain all day long under the hedgerows, carefully swathed in an old shawl; while his mother toiled in the harvest fields. He had himself begun to earn a few pence as soon as he could scare crows from the springing corn, or could help to tend the sheep in the chilly days of spring during the lambing season.
For the last two years his father had been grumbling at his being an idle mouth to feed; though it was rarely Ruth saw a penny of his money, and it had been with difficulty that she had been able to keep her boy at school. But now the time was come when Ishmael must cease to be a child, and must begin to get his own living by regular work. Mr. Chipchase, the farmer, had consented to try him as waggoner's boy; and had promised if he was a good and steady lad, to "make a man of him."
"Mother," said Ishmael, as they sat together on their door-sill in the long, light June evening, listening to the cuckoo and the thrushes singing in the woods, "I told teacher I'm going to service on Monday; and she says I may take little Elsie into the woods to-morrow; and she'll give us dinner to eat there; for me as well as her, mother; because she says I've always been a good boy at school, and she's sorry to lose me."
"I'm glad she's sorry to lose thee," said Ruth; "and if thee weren't to sleep at home every night, I hardly know what I could do without thee, Ishmael. I almost wish thee were a tiny little lad once again."
"When I'm a man," he answered eagerly, "you shan't ever go out working in the fields, or tire yourself, mother. We'll never, never leave here, because there's no place like it; but get the master to let me build a better house that 'll keep you warm and dry, and we'll live together till we die: won't we, mother?"
"Please God!" she said softly, with a smile on her brown face, as she thought how much earlier she must die than the young lad, little more than a child, who sat beside her.
"I should think it would please God," answered Ishmael, in a quiet voice. "He doesn't want us to be always very poor, poorer than other folks, mother?"
"Nay, I don't know," she replied; "His own Son was born in a stable, and died upon the cross, with folks mocking at Him. I don't know what thee and me have to go through, Ishmael. We can only say 'Please God!'"
It was late before Ishmael mounted the ladder to the close loft overhead, and crept into his bed on the floor under the low thatch. But it was after midnight when Ruth, with her wrinkled yet sinewy arms, helped her drunken husband from one rung to another, fearful every night lest her strength should fail her, and that he might fall, crippled or lifeless, on the floor below.