“It's Black Tom, woman,” said Grannie. “Cæsar's freckened mortal of the man's tongue going. 'It's water to his wheel,' he's saying. 'He'll be telling me to set my own house in order, and me a local preacher, too.' But how's the man himself?”
“Pete?” said Nancy. “Aw, tired enough last night, and not down yet.... Hush!... It's his foot on the loft.”
“Poor boy! poor boy!” said Grannie.
The child cried, and then somebody began to beat the floor to the measure of a long-drawn hymn. Grannie must have been sitting before the fire with the baby across her knees.
“Something has happened,” thought Pete as he drew on his clothes. A moment later something had happened indeed. He had opened a drawer of the dressing-table and found the wedding-ring and the earrings where Kate had left them. There was a commotion in the room below by this time, but Pete did not hear it. He was crying in his heart. “It is coming! I know it! I feel it! God help me! Lord forgive me! Amen! Amen!”
Cæsar, the postman, and the constable, as a deputation from “The Christians,” had just entered the house. Black Tom was with them. He was the ferret that had fetched them out of their holes.
“Get thee home, woman,” said Cæsar to Grannie, “This is no place for thee. It is the abode of sin and deception.”
“It's the home of my child's child, and that's enough for me,” said Grannie.
“Get thee back, I tell thee,” said Cæsar, “and come thee to this house of shame no more.”
“Take her, Nancy,” said Grannie, giving up the child. “Shame enough, indeed, I'm thinking, when a woman has to shut her heart to her own flesh and blood if she's not to disrespect her husband,” and she went off, weeping.