Mrs. Todhetley went over through the snow in the morning. Eliza Hoar had died in the night, and lay on the mattress, her wasted face calm and peaceful. Hoar and the children had migrated to the kitchen at the back, a draughty place hardly large enough for the lot to turn round in. The eldest girl was trying to feed the baby with a tea-spoon.
“What are you giving it, Eliza?” asked Mrs. Todhetley.
“Sugar and water, with a sup o’ milk in’t, please, ma’am.”
“I hope you are contented, Jacob Hoar, now you have killed your wife.”
Very harsh words, those for Mrs. Todhetley to speak: and she hastened to soften them. But, as she said afterwards, the matter altogether was a cruel folly and sin, making her heart burn with shame. “That is, Hoar, with the strike; for it is the strike that has killed her.”
Hoar, who had been sitting with his head in the chimney, noticing no one, burst into a sudden flood of tears, and sobbed for a minute or two. Mrs. Todhetley was giving the children a biscuit apiece from her bag.
“I did it all for the best,” said Hoar, presently. “’Twasn’t me that originated the strike. I but joined in it with the rest of my mates.”
“And their wives and families are in no better plight than yours.”
“Nobody can say I’ve not done my duty as a husband and a father,” cried Hoar. “I’ve not been a drunkard, nor a rioter, nor a spendthrift. I’ve never beat her nor swore at her, as some of ’em does.”