“That’s what we’ll have to do.”
“Rather hard, that.”
“I wouldn’t mind so much if it wasn’t to leave them dead children, sir, and no man to care for their graves. ’T ain’t like as if we was rich.”
“Are they buried here, Mrs. Colkett?”
“Yes, they’re put away, back in the woods. You might call that buried. We are just clean broke, Mr. Carington, and that’s all there is to say.”
“I am sorry for you.” And he was, despite all he knew, being a man pitiful of what led to crime or to want. “I shall be very glad to give you help now.”
“The lawyer man he’s coming to-morrow, pretty early. If we ain’t got twenty dollars, the cow must go.”
“Can he take it? I don’t understand that.”
“He says so. I don’t rightly know. We poor folk can’t ever tell. We most always get the worst of it.”
She played her part and told her lie well, looking down as she spoke, and at last wiping her eyes, while Joe uneasily shifted from one foot to another as he stood.