“When did he say that?”
“This morning; afore he went out.”
Dicky’s room had a lean-to roof, and was about the size of our jam closet at Crabb Cot. Not an earthly article was in it but the mattress he was lying on.
“Who sleeps here besides you, Dicky?”
“Jacky and little Sam. ‘Liza and Jessy sleeps by father and mother.”
“Well, good day, Dicky.”
Whom should I come upon at the end of Crabb Lane, but the Squire and Hoar. The Squire had his gun in his hand and was talking his face red: Hoar leaned against the wooden palings that skirted old Massock’s garden, and looked as sullen as he had looked yesterday. I thought the Pater had been blowing him up for beating the boy; but it seemed that he was blowing him up for the strike. Cole, the surgeon, hurrying along on his rounds, stopped just as I did.
“Not your fault, Hoar!” cried the Squire. “Of course I know it’s not your fault alone, but you are as bad as the rest. Come; tell me what good the strike has done for you.”
“Not much as yet,” readily acknowledged Hoar, in a tone of incipient defiance.