“There’s naebody to do nowt at home,” said the red-haired one, with a howl. “Mother’s abed sick, and Tam’s hurt his leg, and who’ll mind baby? He’ll tumble the kittle o’er hisself, I know he will, and he’ll be scalt to death, ’ll baby!”
“Dear, dear!” said Bertie, sympathetically. “But why do you go to school then?”
“’Cos I isn’t thirteen,” sobbed the shock-haired nymph: “I’se only ten. And daddy was had up las’ week and pit in prison ’cos he kept me at home. And if I ain’t at home, who’ll mind baby, and who’ll bile the taters, and who’ll——? Oh, how I wish I was thirteen!”
Bertie did not understand. He had never heard of the School Board.
“What does your father do?” he asked.
“Works i’ brick-field. All on us work i’ brick-field. I can take baby to brick-field; he sit in the clay beautiful, but they awn’t let me take him to schule, and he’ll be scalt, I know he’ll be scalt. He’ll allers get a-nigh the kittle if he can.”
“But it is very shocking not to know how to read,” said the little Earl, very gravely. “You should have learned that as soon as you could speak. I did.”
“Maybe yours aren’t brick-field folk,” said the little girl, stung by her agony to sarcasm. “I’ve allers had a baby to mind, ever since I toddled; first ’twas Tam, and then ’twas Dick, and now ’tis this un. I dunno want to read; awn’t make bricks a-readin’.”
“Oh, but you will learn such beautiful things,” said Bertie. “I do think, you know, that you ought to go to school.”
“So the gemman said as pit dad in th’ lock-up,” said the recalcitrant one, doggedly. “Butiful things aren’t o’ much count, sir, when one’s belly’s empty. I oodn’t go to the blackguds now, if ’tweren’t as poor dad says as how I must, ’cos they lock him up.”