"Ah, well, you won't feel mad, Hezz, for he is never likely to come back here again. He's at a big school place, and going to college soon."
"Well, I'm glad he isn't likely to come; not as I should fly out at him, but Billy's wife right down hates him, and there's the other women do too, for getting their lads sent away. You see they've the little uns to keep; and Billy's wife says to me, on'y las' Sunday as we come back along the cliffs from church with the little gal, 'Hezz,' she says, and she burst out crying, 'it's like being a lone widow with her man drowned in a storm, and it's cruel, cruel hard to bear.'"
"And what did you say, Hezz?"
"Nothin', Master Lance. Couldn't say nothing. Made me feel choky and as if my voice was goin' to[!-- [Pg 198] --] break agen; so I give her luttle gal a pigaback home, and that seemed to do Billy's wife good. Hah, I should like to see our old man home agen, for it's hard work to comfort mother sometimes when I come back without my fish, and she shakes her head at me and says, 'Ah, if your father had been here!'"
"Poor old lady!" said Lance.
"You see, it's when she's hungry, Master Lance. She don't mean it, 'cause she knows well enough there was times and times when the old man come back with an empty maund; but then you see she'd got him, and now it's no fish and no him nayther.—No, I won't, Master Lance. I didn't say all that for you to be givin' me money agen."
"Well, I know that, stupid. It's my money, and I shall spend it how I like. It isn't to buy anything for you, but for you to give to the old woman."
"Nay, I won't take it. If you want to give it her, give it yourself. I arn't a beggar.—Yes, I am, Master Lance—about the hungriest beggar I ever see."
"You take that half-crown and give it to Mother Poltree, or I'll never speak to you again."
"No, I won't. You give it her."