“Oh, mother, let's go right away from London—right out into the country, far as we can, where he'll never find us, where we can sit on the grass under the trees and rest.”
“And leave my sticks for him to drink up? Don't you think I'm such a silly.”
“Do—do let's go, mother! It's worse and worse every day, and he'll kill us if we don't.”
“No fear. He'll knock us about a bit, but he don't want a rope round his neck, you be sure. And he ain't so bad neither, when he's not in the drink. He's sorry he hit me now.”
“Oh, mother, I can't bear it! I hate him—I hate him; and he isn't my father, and he hates me, and he'll kill me some day when I come home with nothing.”
“Who says he isn't your father—where did you hear that, Fan?”
“He calls me bastard every day, and I know what that means. Mother, is he my father?”
“The brute—no!”
“Then why did you marry him, mother? Oh, we could have been so happy together!”
“Yes, Fan, I know that now, but I didn't know it then. I married him three months before you was born, so that you'd be the child of honest parents. He had a hundred pounds with me, but it all went in a year; and it's always been up and down, up and down with us ever since, but now it's nothing but down.”