She—the wife—took her apron from her eyes and looked at him with a sort of amazed anger.
"Gum! do you forget that he had left off his evil ways, and was coming home to be a comfort to us?"
"No, I don't forget it," returned Mr. Gum. "But who was to say that the mood would last? He might have got through his gold, however much it was, and then—. As it is, Nance Gum, we can sleep quiet in our beds, free from that fear."
Clerk Gum was not, on the whole, a model of suavity in the domestic fold. The first blow that had fallen upon him seemed to have affected his temper; and his helpmate knew from experience that whenever he called her "Nance" his mood was at its worst.
Suppressing a sob, she spoke reproachfully.
"It's my firm belief, Gum, and has been all along, that you cared more for your good name among men than you did for the boy."
"Perhaps I did," he answered, by way of retort. "At any rate, it might have been better for him in the long-run if we—both you and me—hadn't cared for him quite so foolishly in his childhood; we spared the rod and we spoiled the child. That's over, and—"
"It's all over," interrupted Mrs. Gum; "over for ever in this world. Gum, you are very hard-hearted."
"And," he continued, with composure, "we may hope now to live down in time the blow he brought upon us, and hold up our heads again in the face of Calne. We couldn't have done that while he lived."
"We couldn't?"