“Put down the knife, lad, and leave the onions if you can’t peel them without setting up a snort like a hog every other second.”
The boy, only too glad to be relieved of his task, obeyed with alacrity, and got up looking lovingly at the unlatched door that led out on to the road. He had not made a step in that direction, however, before his mother, who had been listening, turned from the fire. “Tant, sit down and finish them onions,” she said sharply, and then turning to her husband who was assiduously attending to his net, she said, “Isn’t it enough, Joe Pullen, for me to wear myself to skin and bone feeding you, looking after your children, cleaning your home? Isn’t it enough, I say, for me to do everything for you, to work like a common drudge, to keep you idle, without you forbidding my son to help me?”
Her voice grew more and more shrill and her words came faster and faster until her speech became almost unintelligible.
Joe looked up cautiously from his work.
“O peace with ye, Amy,” he said impatiently, the easily called colour mounting up to his fair hair and his blue eyes growing darker.
“Ay, that’s it.”
Mistress Pullen was a tall, well-made woman, and her eyes screwed themselves into slits of fury as she swung round, platter in hand, upsetting both children at her skirts, who began at once to whimper with fear.
“Ay, that’s it, I must hold my peace! I, who slave day and night to make you happy, must hold my peace! Hold my peace forsooth!” she continued, breaking into a sharp laugh. “Look you, Joe Pullen, where would you and your children be without me? Tell me that. Oh! you sithering rat, you ungrateful mass of rum-sodden food, where would you be without me?”
Joe vouchsafed no answer and the good lady, her wrath abating as suddenly as it had arisen, contented herself with a few muttered questions as to the possibility of Joe and his family remaining for an instant on the earth without her, turned again to the fire, shaking off the yelping little ones who tried to clasp her knees.
Tant continued to sniff over his onion peeling unmolested.