Mr. Drummond perceived this, and began to question Adam in turn. He was interested in him, and showed it.
"It's a queer thing for anybody to want to know about me. I told you about mother. She wasn't like yours. I might ha' been something better than a striker if I'd had a chance. I had it in me to learn, and I was never afraid of hard work. Maybe, if I hadn't got married after mother died, I should have saved money and gone in for a bit of learning; but I'd been slaving on for years, making no friends, because she couldn't abide neighbours. A big town's an awful lonely place if you've nobody belonging to you. I couldn't stand the loneliness. Then it's hard work starting again at school after you're grown up; so I thought, 'There are lots more in the same fix as I am. I may as well settle down to it like the rest,' and I did.
"I had used to work for mother, you see, and when she was gone, it seemed so queer to have all my wages for myself, and be slaving away for just Adam Livesey. There was a girl next door—"
Here Adam's face began working again, as the image of Maggie as she then was came into his mind.
"Never mind," he continued, almost fiercely. "She has been my wife for a dozen years, and sometimes I wish she hadn't. Nothing the matter with her, mister. Don't you go thinking that. Only marrying me turned as pretty a lass as you would wish to see into a mother of seven—one dead, you know—and a thin, weary woman, with too many children, too much work, and far too little money to make things comfortable. Maggie couldn't go out to work and help. How could she, with seven of 'em born in ten years? And one pair of hands! I say, sir, it's wonderful she has managed as well as she has done. Don't you think now I did wrong by that pretty young woman by marrying her? If she hadn't had a place to lay her head in, it would ha' been different. But she had a nice home with her mother, and used to sing like a lark up and down their house, and for a good while after she was married to me. She never sings now. There's a man at Rutherford's that has a bird. It used to be in a large place, where it could fly about and hardly know it was in prison. Something happened to the man who owned the place, and the birds were sold. This man bought the one I spoke about. It was the grandest singer, he said. He put it in a little cage; but though he gave it the primest spot in the cottage, it never sang any more.
"When he told me, I said I was sorry to hear it, but I thought to myself, 'That's just like my poor Maggie.'
"Well, I've had my share of slaving too, but it came natural. And plenty of them to slave for, as you may see, sir."
Adam gave a grim wintry smile as he alluded to the number of his olive branches, but at the same time he pressed the sleeping child a little more closely, as if to say, "I should not like to part with one, for all that," and relapsed into silence.
[CHAPTER VI.]
"THE THIN END OF THE WEDGE."