--Go to sleep direc'ly, or I'll break every bone
in your bodies!"
"Yes, father, yes!" they answered together, nowise terrified by the
awful threat--which was not a little weakened by the fact that they had
heard it every day of their lives, and not yet known it carried into
execution.
But having been thus advised that his children were awake, the father,
without the least hypocrisy, conscious or unconscious, changed his tone:
in the presence of his children he preferred looking at the other side
of the argument. After a few moments' silence he began again thus:--
"Yes, as you was sayin', wife, an' I knows as you're always in the
right, if the right be anyhows to be got at--as you was sayin', I say,
there's no sayin' when that same as we was a speakin' of--the Almighty
is the man I mean--no sayin', I say, when he may come to see as we have,
as I may say, had enough on it, an' turn an' let us have a taste o' luck
again! Luck's sweet; an' some likes, an' it may be as he likes to give
his childer a taste o' sweets now an' again, just as you and me, that is
when we can afford it, an' that's not often, likes to give ourn a
bull's-eye or a suck of toffy.
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