'Nawt till one can fight by hersel', Margery. I forgive yer spite, an' hope Lord woan' bring it back to ye ever. What's said can nawt be helped. Come, Net.'
'You're a mean creature, Margery, to tell him that,' said one, after they were gone. 'I expected to hear you tell him about the place his girl's got. Lord! he's innocent as a baby about it, an' thinks she's on the way up, while everybody else knows it, an' knows it's the way down.'
''Tis that,' said Margery, 'but I've that much decency that I didn't say it. Let the old man take one thing at a time; he'll know it soon enough when she fetches up at the bottom.'
'What did you want to trouble old Adam for?'
'Because I did!' cried the woman, with a sudden flash; 'because I like to hurt people. I've been struck, an' stabbed, an' bruised, an' seared, an' people pointin' fingers at me, whose heart wasn't fouler'n theirs, if my lips were. It's all cut an' slash in the world, an' the only way to get on with pain when you're hit, is to hit somebody else. I'd rather find a soft spot in somebody than have a dollar give me, sure's my name's Margery. What business has he to have any feelin's, workin' year after year down there in the coal? Why haven't people been good to me? I never come up here into this grease; people sent me; an' when hit's the game I'll do my part. I hope his girl's a comfort to him; he'll be proud enough of her some time, you see.'
Adam seated his girl again, opened the doors one after another, and raked and fed the fires; then he shut them, and stood his rake in the corner, and seated himself.
'Well, it's come out,' he said; 'but I didn't mean ye should know, yet. Margery's ill willed, but it's like she didn't think.'
'I oughtn't to have told you till after to-morrow, father.'
'There's how't seems hard, thet it must come to Christmas. An' when I've been here so long, twenty year noo, Net.'
'Oh, don't call me that any more, father; I don't like it.'