“Well, Thomas.”
“Alice, you know I have been up at Ned’s. Ned’s a quiet, civil man, and a gradely Christian too. I wish our house had been like his; we shouldn’t have lost our Sammul then.”
“Well, my word! what’s come over you, Thomas? Why, sure you’re not a-going to be talked over by yon Brierley folk!” exclaimed his wife. “Why, they’re so proud, they can’t look down upon their own shoes: and as for Brierley’s wenches, if a fellow offers to speak to ’em, they’ll snap his head off. And Martha herself’s so fine that the likes of me’s afraid to walk on the same side of the road for fear of treading on her shadow.”
“Well, Alice, I’ve oft abused ’em all myself; but I were wrong all the time. And you’re wrong, Alice, too. They’ve never done us no harm, and we’ve nothing gradely to say against ’em; and you know it too. They’ve toiled hard for their brass, and they haven’t made it away as we have done; and if they’re well off, it’s no more nor they deserve.”
“Not made away their brass! No, indeed!” said his wife, contemptuously, “no danger of that; they’ll fist it close enough. They like it too well to part with it. They’ll never spend a ha’penny to give a poor chap a drop of beer, though he’s dying of thirst.”
“No, ’cos they’ve seen what a curse the drink has been to scores and hundreds on us. Ah, Alice, if you had but seen the happy faces gathered round Ned’s hearth-stone; if you had but heard Ned’s hearty welcome—though he can’t but know that I’ve ever been the first to give him and his a bad word—you couldn’t say as you’re saying now.”
“Come, Thomas,” said his wife, “don’t be a fool. If Ned Brierley likes his teetottal ways, and brings up his lads and wenches same fashion, let him please himself; but he mustn’t make teetottallers of you nor me.”
“And why shouldn’t he make a teetottaller of me?” cried Thomas, his anger rising at his wife’s opposition. “What has the drink done for us, I’d like to know? What’s it done with my wage, with our Betty’s wage, with our poor Sammul’s wage? Why, it’s just swallowed all up, and paid us back in dirt and rags. Where’s there such a beggarly house as this in all the village? Why haven’t we clothes to our backs and shoes to our feet? It’s because the drink has took all.”
“It’s not the drink,” screamed Alice, her eyes flashing with rage. “You’ve nothing to blame the drink for; the drink’s right enough. It’s yourself; it’s your own fault. You haven’t any conduct in your drink like other folk. You must sit sotting at the ‘George’ till you can’t tell your hand from your foot; and then you must come home and blackguard me and the childer, and turn the house out of the windows. You’ve driven our Sammul out of the country; and you’ll be the death of our Betty, and of me too, afore you’ve done.”
“Death of you!” shouted her husband, in a voice as loud as her own. “And what odds then? No conduct in my drink! And what have you had in yourn? What’s there to make a man tarry by the hearth-stone in such a house as this, where there’s nothing to look at but waste and want? I wish every drop of the drink were in the flames with this.” So saying, he seized the jug, threw the little that was left of the spirits in it into the fire, and, without stopping to listen to the torrent of abuse which poured from the lips of his wife, hurried out of the house. And whither did he go? Where strong habit led him, almost without his being conscious of it—he was soon within the doors of the “George.” By this time his anger had cooled down, and he sat back from the rest of the company on an empty bench. The landlord’s eye soon spied him.