Like most mothers who are worth their salt, she had rather a habit of snapping at the Foreman Shunter.
The boy was feeling wonderfully comfortable. In fact, he had never felt so comfortable in his life. And he was just sufficiently awake to know that his fate was being decided upon.
"What'll you do with him, anyhow?"
"I don't know," snapped Mother.
"I don't neither. Seems to me there's nothing for it but to hand him over to the police."
The boy was fully awake now. His heart stood still. It seemed an age before mother spoke in answer to this terrible suggestion.
"Yes, of course, there's always that," she said, at last.
The boy's heart died within him.
"He can't stay here, that's a moral," said the Foreman Shunter.
"I never said he could," snapped Mother. "But I don't hold with the police myself. It means the Work'us, and you'd better not be born at all, Job Lorimer, than go to the Work'us."