The door was open, and the Deemster stepped in. One of the women, old Mrs. Kerruish, was sitting on a stool by the fire—it was a fire of sputtering hazel sticks—shredding some scraps of green vegetables into a pot of broth that swung from the iron hook of the chimney. The other woman, Mally, was doing something in the dark crib of a sleeping-room, shut off from the living-room by a wooden partition like the stanchion-board of a stable. The boy was asleep; his soft breathing came from the dark crib.
"Mrs. Kerruish," said the Deemster, "I am willing to take the lad, and rear him, and when the time comes, to set him to business, and give him a start in life."
Mrs. Kerruish had risen stiffly from her stool, and her face was set hard.
"Think of it, woman, think of it, and don't answer in haste," said the Deemster.
"We'd have to be despard hard put to for a bite and a sup before we'd take anything from you, Deemster," said the old woman.
The Deemster's quick eyes, under the shaggy gray brows, glanced about the room. It was a place of poverty, descending to squalor. The floor was of the bare earth trodden hard, the roof was of the bare thatch, with here and there a lath pushed between the uphewn spars to keep it up, and here and there a broken patch dropping hayseed.
"You are desperate hard put to, woman," said the Deemster, and at that Mally herself came out of the sleeping-crib. Her face was thin and pale, and her bleared eyes had lost their sharp light; it was a countenance without one ray of hope.
"Stop, mother," she said; "let us hear what the Deemster has to offer."
"Offer? Offer?" the old woman rapped out; "you've had enough of the Deemster's offers, I'm thinking."
"Be quiet, mother," said Mally, and then she turned to the Deemster and said, "Well, sir, and what is it?"