"You talk queer just like my old man did, so that'll sound true. You takes your children from Nightingale Lane, and you sends them to that big Board School by the docks—my Muriel knows the name—and you enters them as Spence, not Woods—mind you tells them they are Spence. Then you starts a new life. There are cleaners wanted in that idiot school just built by Whitelime Church, and I'll be your reference if you want one. I'll lend you my crape fall, and I'll wash my black-bordered 'ankerchief, which has mourned afore boards and committees for the last ten years or more; mind you use it right and sniff into it when they asks too many questions, and be sure and rub it in as 'ow you've buried 'im in Sheffield. I've 'eard all the women talking at the laundry as 'ow they're refusing work to deserted wives, says as the Council don't want to make it easy for 'usbands to dump families on the rates—good Gawd! as if a man eat up body and soul with a fancy for another woman stops to think of his family and where they will get dumped. Well, I mustn't grumble. Lee was a good man to me and I miss 'im sad, but there is my Gladys, the prettiest of the bunch, the flower of the flock as 'er dad used to call 'er, left within three year of 'er wedding by 'er 'usband, who was the maddest and silliest lover I ever seed till she said 'Yes' to 'im, though dad and I always told 'er 'e was no good. No, my dear, I'm afraid as it isn't the truth, but if folks play us such dirty tricks we must be even with them. Think of your little 'ome and your little kiddies and rouse yourself for their sakes. You are a strong and 'earty woman when you stop crying for 'im and get some victuals into you, and you don't want the Board to get at 'em and take 'em away, protecting them against you and sending them to that great Bastille. Don't give way, dearie. I'll come with you to-morrow. And I'd better be your mother-in-law; folks know me round 'ere, and 'ow me and the old dad 'ad fifteen of 'em, and a daughter-in-law more or less won't matter. Don't give way, I tell you. Give us another cup of tea, Mrs. Hayes."
The next morning a deep-crape-veiled Mrs. Spence, propped up by an equally funereal Mrs. Lee, the black-bordered handkerchief much in evidence, sought and obtained work at the new L.C.C. School for the Mentally Defective, and the terrors of the workhouse, the Poor Law Schools, or even prison were temporarily averted.
THE RUNAWAY
He sat alone, in a corner of the playing field, a white-faced child of the slums, in a dumb agony of loneliness and despair.
He was frightened and appalled at the wide stretches of green woodland around and the great dome of the blue sky above. It made him feel smaller and more deserted than ever, and his head was sore with home-sickness for his mother and Mabel, the sister next him, and the baby, his especial charge, for whose warm weight his little arms ached with longing.
He had always been his mother's special help. He had minded the younger ones when she got a job at washing or charing, and helped her to sew sacks with little fingers quickly grown deft with practice. They had been very happy, even though food was often short, and spent many pleasant hours amongst the graves of their churchyard playgrounds, or sitting on the Tower Wharf watching the river and the big ships.
The nightmare of his short life had been a man called Daddy, who came back when they were all asleep, smelling strong and queer, and then there would be furious words and the dull thuds of blows falling on his mother's slender body, and he would throw himself screaming to protect his beloved against the wild beast that was attacking her. Once in the fray his arm had got broken, and he had seen, as in an evil dream, a dreaded "cop" enter the room, and Daddy had been hailed to prison, after which there was long peace and joy in the little home.
Then the man came out, and the quarrels were worse than ever, till a kindly neighbour took Percy to sleep on the rag bed with her other children, out of the way of Daddy, who had conceived a violent hatred against his firstborn.