A farm cart blocked the roadway. Over the tail hung three or four wailing children; into it a couple of sturdy men were trying to lift an old woman, seated in a chair. A dingy beadle and a constable, who formed the escort and looked ill at ease, stood beside the cart, and round it half a score of slatternly women pushed and shrieked and gesticulated. On the group and the whole dreary scene nightfall cast a pallid light.
“What is it?” Basset asked.
“They’re shifting Nan Oates to the poorhouse,” a man answered. “Her son died of the fever, and there’s none to keep her or the little uns. She’ve done till now, but they’ll not give her bite nor sup out of the House—that’s the law now’t seems. So the House it be!”
“Her’d rather die than go!” cried a girl.
“D—n them and their Bastilles!” exclaimed a younger man. “Are we free men, or are we not?”
“Free men?” shrieked a woman, who had seized the horse’s rein and was loudest in her outcry. “No, nor Staffordshire men, nor Englishmen, nor men at all, if you let an old woman that’s always lived decent go to their stone jug this way. Give me Stafford Gaol—’tis miles afore it!”
“Ay, you’re at home there, Bet!” a voice in the crowd struck in, and the laugh that followed lightened matters.
Basset looked with pity at the old woman. Her head sunk upon her breast, her thin shawl tucked about her shoulders, her gray hair in wisps on her cheeks, she gazed in tearless grief upon the hovel which had been home to her. “Who’s to support her,” he asked, “if she stays?”
“For the bite and sup there’s neighbors,” a man answered. “Reverend Colet he said he might do something. But he’s been lammed. And there’s the rent. The boy’s ten, and he made four shilling a week in the pit, but the new law’s stopped the young uns working.”
“Ay, d—n all new laws!” cried another. “Poor laws and pit laws we’re none but the worse for them!”