About half-past eight, one of the latter suddenly lifted the of a house door and thrust in her head. It was Joe Fisher's wife. Her face was red, and her cap in tatters.
"Is our Becky in here, Mrs. Carter?"
Mrs. Carter was busy. She was the parent of Miss Betsy. Her kitchen fire was out, her furniture was heaped one thing upon another; a pail of water stood ready to wash the brick floor, when she should have finished rubbing up the grate, and her hands and face were as grimy as the black-lead.
"There's no Becky here," snapped she.
"I can't find her," returned Mrs. Fisher. "I thought her might be along of your Betsy. I say, here's your husband coming round the corner. There's Mark Mason and Robert East and Dale along of him. And—my! what has that young 'un of East's been doing to hisself? He's black from head to foot. Come and look."
Mrs. Carter the invitation. She was a hard-working, woman, but a cross one. Priding herself upon her cleanliness, she perpetually returned loud thanks that she was not as the dirty ones around her. She was the Pharisee amidst many publicans.
"If I passed my time staring and gossiping as some does, where 'ud my work be?" was her . "Shut the door, Suke Fisher."
Suke Fisher did as she was bid. She turned her wrists back upon her , and walked to meet the advancing party, having discerned their approach by the light of the gas-lamps. "Be you going to be sold for a blackamoor?" demanded she of the boy.
The boy laughed. His head, face, shoulders, hands, were with a thick, black liquid, not unlike blacking. He appeared to enjoy the treat, as if he had been anointed with some oil.
"He is not a bad spectacle, is he, Fisher?" remarked the young man, whom she had called Robert East.
"What's a-done it?" questioned she.
"Him and Jacky Brumm got , and upset the dye-pot upon themselves. We rubbed 'em down with the leather , but it keeps on dripping from their hair."
"Won't Charlotte warm his back for him!" apostrophised Mrs. Fisher.
The boy threw a disdainful look at her, in return for the remark. "Charlotte's not so fond of warming backs. She never even scolds for an accident."
The boy and Robert East were half-brothers. They entered one of the cottages. Robert East and his sister were between twenty and thirty, and the boy was ten. Their mother had died early, and the young boy's mother, their father's second wife, died when the child was born. The father also died. How Robert and his sister, the one then seventeen, the other fourteen, had struggled to make a living for themselves, and to bring up the baby, they alone knew. The manner in which they had succeeded was a to many; none were more respectable now than they were in all Honey Fair.
Charlotte, neat and nice, sat by her bright kitchen fire, a savoury cooking on the hob beside it. It was her custom to have something good for supper on a Saturday night. Did she make home attractive on that night to draw her brother from the seductions of the public-house? Most likely. And she had her reward: for Robert never failed to come. The cloth was laid, the red bricks of the floor were clean, and Charlotte's face, as she looked up from her stocking-mending, was bright. It darkened to , however, when she cast her eyes on the boy.
"Tom, what have you been doing?"
"Jacky Brumm threw a pot of dye over me, Charlotte."
"There's not much real damage, Charlotte," interposed her brother. "It looks worse than it is. I'll get it out of his hair presently, and put his clothes into a pail of water. What have you got to-night? It smells good."
He to supper, and took off the lid of the saucepan to peep in. She had some beef, with carrots, and the savoury steam to Robert's pleased face.
Very few in Honey Fair managed as did Charlotte East. How she did her housework no one knew. Not a woman, married or single, got through more glove-sewing than Charlotte. Not one kept her house in better order: and her clothes and her brother's were neat and respectable, week-days as well as Sundays. Her work was taken into the on Saturday mornings, and her marketing was done. In the afternoon she cleaned her house, and by four o'clock was ready to sit down to her mending. No one ever saw her in a , and yet all her work was done; and well done. Perhaps one great secret of it was that she rose very early in the morning, winter and summer.
"Look, Robert, here is a nice book I have bought," said she, putting a periodical into his hands. "It comes out weekly. I shall take it in."
Robert turned over the leaves. "It seems very interesting," he said presently. "Here's a paper that tells all about the Holy Land. And another that tells us how glass is made; I have often wondered."
"You can read it to us of an evening while I work," said she. "It will be quite a help to our getting on Tom: almost as good as sending him to school. I gave——"
The words were interrupted. The door was violently burst open, and a woman entered the kitchen; knocking at doors before entering was not the fashion in Honey Fair. The intruder was Mrs. Brumm.
"I say, Robert East, did you see anything of my husband?"
"I saw him go into the Horned ."
"Then I wish the Horned Ram was into him!" wrathfully retorted Mrs. Brumm. "He faithfully he'd come home with his wages the first thing after leaving work. He knows I have not a thing in the place for to-morrow—and Dame Buffle looking out for her money. I have a good mind to go down to the Horned Ram, and be on to him!"
Robert East offered no opinion upon this delicate point. He remembered the last time Mrs. Brumm had gone to the Horned Ram to be "on" to her husband, and what it had produced. A midnight quarrel that disturbed the of Honey Fair.
"Who was along of him?" pursued she.
"Three or four of them. Hubbard and Jones, I saw go in: and Adam Thorneycroft."
A quick rising of the head, as if startled, and a faint accession of colour, told that one of those names had struck, perhaps unpleasantly, on the ear of Charlotte East. "Where are your own ?" she asked of Mrs. Brumm.
"I have had to take them to Bankes's," was the rueful reply. "It's a good deal now, and they're in a regular tantrum this week, and wouldn't even wait till Monday. They threatened to tell Brumm, and it frightened me out of my seventeen senses. And now, for him to go into that dratted Horned Ram with his wages! and me without a pennypiece! It's not more for the necessaries I want to get in, than for the things that is in . I can't iron nothing: the irons is there."
Charlotte, busy still, turned round. "I would not put in irons, and such things, that I wanted to use."
"I dare say you wouldn't!" responded Mrs. Brumm. "One has to put in what one's got, and the things our husbands won't miss the sight of. It's fine to be you, Charlotte East, setting yourself up for a lady, and never putting your foot inside the pawn-shop, with your clean hands and your clean kitchen on a Saturday night, sitting down to a hot supper, while the rest of us is a-scrubbing!"
Charlotte laughed good-humouredly. "If I tried to set myself up for a lady, I could not be one. I work as hard as anybody; only I get it done betimes."
Mrs. Brumm sniffed—having no ready answer at hand. And at that moment Tom East, encased in black, peeped out of the brewhouse, where he had been sent by Charlotte to wash the dye off his hands. "Sakes alive!" uttered Mrs. Brumm, aghast at the sight.
"Jacky's worse than me," responded Tom, rather proud of having to say so much. Robert explained to her how it had happened.
"And our Jacky's as bad as that!" she cried. "Won't I it out of him!"
"Nonsense," said Robert; "it was an accident. Boys will be boys."
"Yes, they will: and it's not the men that have to wash for 'em and keep 'em clean!" retorted Mrs. Brumm, terribly wrathful. "And me at a standstill for my irons! And that beast of a Brumm stopping out."
"I will lend you my irons," said Charlotte.
"I won't take 'em," was the ungracious reply. "If I don't get my own, I won't borrow none. Brumm, he'll be looking out for his Sunday clean shirt to-morrow, and he won't get it; and that'll punish him more than anything else. There's not a man in Honey Fair as likes to go sprucer on a Sunday than Brumm."
"So much the better," said Charlotte. "When men lose pride in their appearance, they are apt to lose it in their conduct."
"You must always put in your word for folks, Charlotte East, let 'em be ever so bad," was Mrs. Brumm's parting salutation, as she went off and shut the door with a bang.
Meanwhile Timothy Carter, Mrs. Carter's husband, had turned into his own , after leaving Robert East. The first thing to greet him was the pail of water. Mrs. Carter had completed her grate, and was dashing her water on to the floor. Timothy received it on his legs.
"What's that for?" demanded Timothy, who was a and timid little man.
"Why do you brush in so sharp, then?" cried she. "Who was to know you was a-coming?"
Timothy had not "brushed in sharp;" he had gone in quietly. He stood ruefully shaking the wet from his legs, first one, then the other, and afterwards began to pick his way on tiptoe towards the fireplace.
"Now, it's of no use your attempting to sit down yet," his wife, in her usual cross accents. "There ain't no room for you at the fire, and there ain't no warmth in it; it's but this blessed minute lighted. Sit yourself on that table, again the wall, and then your legs'll be in the dry."
"And there I may sit for an hour, for you'll be all that time before you have finished, by the looks on't," he ventured to .
"And half another hour to the end of it," answered she. "There's Betsy, as ought to be ,
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CHAPTER XX. THE GLOVE OPERATIVES.
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CHAPTER XXII. MR. BRUMM'S SUNDAY SHIRT.
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