“Only when I’m with you. Otherwhiles, I’m Granny—three times over. I lay that basket’s for one o’ your gran’chiller—ain’t it?”
“’Tis for Arthur—my Jane’s eldest.”
“But he ain’t workin’ nowheres, is he?”
“No. ’Tis a picnic-basket.”
“You’re let off light. My Willie, he’s allus at me for money for them aireated wash-poles folk puts up in their gardens to draw the music from Lunnon, like. An’ I give it ’im—pore fool me!”
“An’ he forgets to give you the promise-kiss after, don’t he?” Mrs. Ashcroft’s heavy smile seemed to strike inwards.
“He do. ’No odds ’twixt boys now an’ forty year back. ’Take all an’ give naught—an’ we to put up with it! Pore fool we! Three shillin’ at a time Willie’ll ask me for!”
“They don’t make nothin’ o’ money these days,” Mrs. Ashcroft said.
“An’ on’y last week,” the other went on, “me daughter, she ordered a quarter pound suet at the butchers’s; an’ she sent it back to ’um to be chopped. She said she couldn’t bother with choppin’ it.”
“I lay he charged her, then.”