“Faith,” said Mrs McQueen, “I’d not be in that man’s shoes for all you could offer. It’s grinding down the faces of the poor he is, and that at the telling of some one else! Not even his badness is his own! He does as he’s bid.”
“He gets fat on it,” said Mr McQueen.
“Faith, we’ll get along somehow,” said Mrs McQueen. “We always have, though ’tis true it’s been scant fare we’ve had now and again.”
Mr McQueen didn’t answer. He went back to his work in the fields. Mrs
McQueen got the Twins started off to school, with their lunch in a little tin bucket, and began her washing, but she did not sing at her work that day as she sometimes did.
Larry and Eileen knew that something was wrong, though their Father and Mother had not said anything to them about it.
They had seen Mr Conroy talking with their Father in the yard. “And it’s never a sign of anything good to see Mr Conroy,” Eileen said.
Larry was thinking the same thing, for he said:—