“’Twadn’t for that I went. You know, ’s’well’s me, that na’un happens to ye till it ’as ’appened. Your mind don’t warn ye before’and of the road ye’ve took, till you’re at the far eend of it. We’ve only a backwent view of our proceedin’s.”
“’Oo was it?”
“’Arry Mockler.” Mrs. Ashcroft’s face puckered to the pain of her sick leg.
Mrs. Fettley gasped. “’Arry? Bert Mockler’s son! An’ I never guessed!”
Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. “An’ I told myself—an’ I beleft it—that I wanted field-work.”
“What did ye get out of it?”
“The usuals. Everythin’ at first—worse than naught after. I had signs an’ warnings a-plenty, but I took no heed of ’em. For we was burnin’ rubbish one day, just when we’d come to know how ’twas with—with both of us. ’Twas early in the year for burnin’, an’ I said so. ‘No!’ says he. ‘The sooner dat old stuff’s off an’ done with,’ ’e says, ‘the better.’ ’Is face was harder’n rocks when he spoke. Then it come over me that I’d found me master, which I ’adn’t ever before. I’d allus owned ’em, like.”
“Yes! Yes! They’re yourn or you’re theirn,” the other sighed. “I like the right way best.”
“I didn’t. But ’Arry did.... ’Long then, it come time for me to go back to Lunnon. I couldn’t. I clean couldn’t! So, I took an’ tipped a dollop o’ scaldin’ water out o’ the copper one Monday mornin’ over me left ’and and arm. Dat stayed me where I was for another fortnight.”
“Was it worth it?” said Mrs. Fettley, looking at the silvery scar on the wrinkled fore-arm.