“Ah, I’m sorry for that. D’ye think ye’ll be able to chop sticks for to-morrow’s fire?”
“Ye oughtn’t to ask me to do such work,” said she, with a sob. “Ye know I’m not fit for it.”
“Winter an’ summer, year in, year out, I fill that bucket—and every evenin’, no matter how tired I may be, I chop them sticks. When I had the lumbago last year, I filled your bucket all the same, and when I sprained my wrist I managed to use the chopper with my left hand. Yet, if you’ve the least little ache or pain, you never do a hand’s turn, Sally. I ask you straight, is that fair?”
Sally gazed at him in silence, her lip still trembling, her eyes filled with tears.
“An’ if ye’d take a bit o’ pride in yourself an’ the childern,” he went on, “there’d be some pleasure in comin’ home. Yes, and I’d be glad, too, to save up an’ take ye for an outing now and again. But when I look at ye with the clothes dropping off ye, and a face that hasn’t as much as nodded at cold water, I feel—well, I feel that, if I wasn’t a proper temperance man, it’s to the public I’d go every night of my life.”
Sally looked down still without speaking.
“Just think of it,” he went on; “you have your share of work, no doubt; but I have mine too. If we each do our own, and pull together, we can get along right enough. Come, little ’ooman, see how nice you’ve made the place look—it didn’t take so very long, did it? An’ what a lot of mendin’ ye did this afternoon—not to mention the buttons I sewed on for ye,” he added, with a twinkle in his eye—“it wasn’t so very much trouble once ye set about it. Now, shall we make a fresh start? I’ll go to work to-morrow morning if you’ll get out your needles and thread, and throw them nasty silly story books in the fire. And let’s make the childern useful, my dear—a little bit o’ light work is as good as play to a child.”
Sally glanced up with an odd look, in spite of the tears that were still upon her face.
“I never heard ye make such a long speech in your life, Jim,” said she. “I wonder—I wonder if anybody’s been putting you up to all the games you’ve been playing this day. Mrs Spencer now—she called here yesterday—”
“She did,” said Jim, beginning to laugh a little. “Well, I’ll tell you the truth, Sally, the notion did come from her. Ye mustn’t be vexed, my dear; but I think ’twas a good notion. ‘If ever any folks should bear one another’s burdens,’ says the mistress, ‘it’s husband and wife.’ Come, Sally, I’ll do my best for you if you’ll do your best for me.”