When tea was over, Adam took up the little handbill left by the visitors, and read what was printed thereon.
"Why?" he exclaimed. "This preacher must be the one Mr. Drummond told me about. The name is Kennedy, the room is in Aqueduct Street. They're having meetings all next week, beside to-morrow and the Sunday after."
"They're welcome to have 'em for a month o' Sundays for me," said Maggie, promptly. "I've enough to do without going to such places. How would the dinner be got ready, and the house cleaned, and the washing done, to say nothing of the children being seen to, if I were to be running off to meetings morn, noon, and night, as some of 'em do?
"There's Mrs. Jackson, she goes to some meeting or another nearly every day, and she's always talking about her soul, while she's neglecting her home and her husband's body. It's a good job she has no children, but poor George came home this very day just before you did. The house was all in a litter, dinner things on the table, fire out, and no kettle a-boil. I believe she was off to this very room in Aqueduct Street. Poor George came across here with a little teapot in his hand, to beg a drop of boiling water, because he had to go back, and would be working till eleven."
"New boiler," jerked in Adam. "Rutherford's made it."
"Yes, he said so. And there he had to sit down in that kitchen, with everything on heaps, and drink his drop of tea and eat his bread with hardly a scrape o' butter. She hadn't had time to buy any before she went off to the meeting. He left his wages for me to give her, all but a shilling, and I was to tell her he would be late, and he would get a threepenny pie for his supper. He gets half as much more wages as you do, Adam, and not a bit o' comfort out of them, though there's only two to keep."
Adam shook his head in sorrowful sympathy, remarking, "George is a skilled mechanic. He gets twice what I do, as a regular thing."
"More shame for Sarah Jackson to serve him as she does. If you'd been at home, you should have asked him to bring his tea and have it here."
"You might ha' asked him, Maggie."
"Not I," she returned, with some severity of speech. "You don't catch me having other folk's husbands here unless their wives are with 'em, or you are at home. I don't believe in giving gossiping tongues anything to talk about. I took George Jackson's key and the money from him on the doorstep, and when Sarah came, I passed them on to her. I did not ask her in, any more than her husband. I can tell you, Adam, if that woman had begun talking about her 'beautiful meeting,' I should have said something to her that wouldn't have sounded very beautiful, so I cut her off short."