"I don't believe a
word of it, Mary. Since the railway's come, biz has gone to the dogs;
and they're only too glad to get the chance of sacking another man."
Polly looked untidier than ever; she wore a slatternly wrapper, and her
hair was thrust unbrushed into its net. But she suffered, no doubt, in
her own way; she was red-eyed, and very hasty-handed with her nestful of
babes. Sitting in the cheerless parlour, Ned's dark-eyed eldest on her
knee, Mary strove to soothe and encourage. But: it has never been much
of a home for the poor boy was her private opinion; and she pressed her
cheek affectionately against the little black curly head that was a
replica of Ned's own.
"What's goin' to become of us all, the Lord only knows," said Polly,
after having had the good cry the sympathetic presence of her
sister-in-law justified. "I'm not a brown cent troubled about Ned--only
boiling with 'im. 'E's off on the booze, sure enough--and 'e'll turn up
again, safe and sound, like loose fish always do. Wait till I catch 'im
though! He'll get it hot."
"We never ought to have come here," she went on drying her eyes. "Drat
the place and all that's in it, that's what I say! He did better'n this
in Castlemaine; and I'd pa behind me there. But once Richard had sent
'im that twenty quid, he'd no rest till he got away. And I thought, when
he was so set on it, may be it'd have a good effect on 'im, to be near
you both. But that was just another shoot into the brown.
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