"End it! I wish we could end it! The girls is going to slave theirselves night and day this week and next. But it's not for my good: it's for their'n. They want to get their grand silks out o' pawn! Nothing but outside finery goes down with them, though they've not an inside rag to their backs. They leave care to me. Fools to be sure, they was, to buy them silks! They have been in the pawn-shop ever since, and Bankes's a-tearing 'em to pieces for the money!"
"I should end it by confessing to Jacob," said Charlotte, when she could get in a word. "He is not a bad husband——"
"And look at his passionate temper!" broke in Mrs. Cross. "Let it get to his ears that we have gone on tick to Bankes's and elsewhere, and he'd rave the house out of winders."
"He would be angry at first, no doubt; but when he cooled down he would see the necessity of something being done, and help in it. If you all set on and put your shoulders to the wheel you might soon get clear. Live upon the very least that will satisfy hunger—the plainest food—dry bread and potatoes. No beer, no meat, no finery, no luxuries; and with the rest of the week's money begin to pay up. You'd be clear in no time."
Mrs. Cross stared in consternation. "You be a Job's comforter, Charlotte! Dry bread and taters! who could put up with that?"
"When poor people like us fall into trouble, it is the only way that I know of to get out of it. I'd rather mortify my appetite for a year than have my rest broken by care."
"Your advice is good enough for talking, Charlotte, but it don't answer for acting. Cross must have his bit o' meat and his beer, his butter and his cheese, his tea and his sugar—and so must the rest on us. But about this five shillings?—do lend it me, Charlotte! It is for the landlord: we're almost in a fix with him."
"For the landlord!" repeated Charlotte involuntarily. "You must keep him paid, or it would be the worst of all."
"I know we must. He was took bad yesterday—more's the blessing!—and couldn't get round; but he's here to-day as burly as beef. We haven't paid him for this three weeks," she added, dropping her voice to an ominous whisper; "and I declare to you, Charlotte East, that the sight of him at our door is as good to me as a dose of physic. Just now, round he comes, a-lifting the latch, and me turning sick the minute I sees him. 'Ready, Mrs. Cross?' asks he, in his short, surly way, putting his brown wig up. 'I'm sorry I ain't, Mr. Abbott, sir,' says I; 'but I'll have some next week for certain.' 'That won't do for me,' says he: 'I must have it this. If you can't give me some money, I shall apply to your husband.' The fright this put me into I've not got over yet, Charlotte; for Cross don't know but what the rent's paid up regular. 'I know what's going on,' old Abbott begins again, 'and I have knowed it for some time. You women in this Honey Fair, you pay your money to them Bankeses, which is the blight o' the place, and then you can't pay me.' Only fancy his calling Bankeses a blight!"
"That's just what they are," remarked Charlotte.