Nor did it mend the
matter to send them early to bed, for the earlier they went the longer
were they in going to sleep. At the same time they had few things to
talk of which they minded their hearing, and to the mother at least it
was a pleasure to have all her chickens in the nest with her.
One evening after the boys were in bed, the father and mother sat
talking. They had a pint of beer on the table between them, of which the
woman tasted now and then that the man might imagine himself sharing it
with her. Silence had lasted for some time. The mother was busy
rough-patching a garment of Moxy's. The man's work for the day was over,
but not the woman's!
"Well, I dunnow!" he said at last, and there ceased.
"What don ye know, John?" asked his wife, in a tone she would have tried
to make cheerful had she but suspected it half as mournful as it was.
"There's that Mr. Christopher as was such a friend!" he said: "--you
don't disremember what he used to say about the Almighty and that? You
remember as how he used to say a man could no more get out o' the sight
o' them eyes o' hisn than a child could get out o' sight o' the eyes on
his mother as was a watchin' of him!"
"Yes, John, I do remember all that very well, and a great comfort it was
to me at the time to hear him say so, an' has been many's the time
since, when I had no other--leastways none but you an' the children.
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