"Are you standing in the rain that it may make you grow, as the children say?" asked William in his ever-pleasant tone.
"I'm standing here 'cause I've nowhere else to stand," said the man, his voice full of resentment. "I'm turned out of our room, and I have no money for the Horned Ram."
"A good thing you have not," thought William. "What has turned you out of your room?" he asked.
"I'm turned out, sir, by the row there is in it. Our Mary Ann's come home."
"Mary Ann?" repeated William, not quite understanding.
"Our Mary Ann, what took and married Ben Tyrrett. A fine market she have brought her pigs to!"
"What has she done?" questioned William.
"She's done enough," wrathfully answered Cross. "We told her when she married Tyrrett that he was nothing but a jobber at fifteen shillings a-week—and it's all he was, sir, as you know. 'Wait,' I says to her; 'somebody better than him'll turn up.' Her mother says 'Wait.' Others says 'Wait.' No, not she; the girls are all marrying mad. Well, she took her own way; she would take it; and they got married, and set up upon nothing. Neither of 'em had saved a two-penny-piece; and Ben fond of the public; and our Mary Ann fond of laziness and finery; and not knowing how to keep house any more than her young sister Patty did."
William remembered the little interlude of that evening in which Miss Patty had played her part. Jacob continued.
"It was all fine and sunshiny with 'em for a few days or a few weeks, till the novelty wears off, and then they finds things going cranky. The money, that begins to run short; and Mary Ann, she finds that Ben likes his glass; and Ben, he finds that she's just a doll, with no gumption or management inside her. They quarrels—naterally, and they comes to us to settle it. 'You was both red-hot for the bargain,' says I, 'and you must just make the best of it and of one another.' And so they went back: and it has gone on till this, quarrelling continual. And now he's took to beat her, and home she came to-night, not half an hour ago, with her three children and a black eye, vowing she'll stop at home and won't go back to him again. And she and her mother's having words over it, and the babies a-squalling—enough noise to raise the ceiling off, and I come out of it. I wish I was dead, I do!"