Even then Mrs. Radford was not ashamed. “A few green peas——” she began again.
“Not one green pea, ma’am,” replied Mrs. Tregennis, firmly, “and you’ll excuse me for sayin’ it, ma’am, but I really cannot understand as how you can ask for any such thing; so there’s where ’tis to.”
Mrs. Radford flushed hotly. “Well! you’ll see,” she said vindictively, “they’re living at too grand a rate, they are. Their money won’t last out, it won’t. You can’t say that you were not warned.”
Passing into her own room Mrs. Radford slammed the door, while Mrs. Tregennis carried the lamb, green peas and baked potatoes upstairs to the spendthrift ladies.
CHAPTER XV
FOR more than three weeks it had been very fine on land, but at sea it was rough and stormy, and the water was churned up and thick. For boulter-fishing in the spring the sea must be clear. Because of the bad weather-conditions there was much poverty in Draeth. Between the end of September and the third week in April some of the fishermen had earned barely three pounds. Since Christmas the boats had not once been able to put out to sea. This meant that all through Lent, when the fish fetches record prices, there had not been a single catch.
The poverty of the fisher-folk pressed heavily on the tradespeople too. When children were almost starving they could not refuse to supply the homes with food. Certainly they entered in their credit ledgers the amounts that were due to them from this family or that, but they well knew that in many cases the reckoning was so great that it would take more than a lifetime to pay it off.
As it so often happens at times like these the most deserving found the least relief. The Prynnes, the Tregennises, the Williamses, the Darks and others shunned debt as they would have shunned the plague. Rather than ask for food to be supplied to them on credit they would starve. Day by day the hoard saved up against a rainy day grew less; for you may be prepared to meet a rainy day, but when the rainy day lengthens into a rainy month then you feel the pinch. For many families in Draeth this was the time of fear. The ever-present question was: How much longer was it possible to hold out?