She could scarcely frame the homely words. For some unaccountable reason she felt afraid, felt like some poor creature in a trap."He Jack Straw!" cried Wells, with such a look as if his eyes rested on a spectre. "Have I not heard John Ball say that he wished Wat Tyler were like Jack Straw?"
ONE:Once more she had taken up her unwilling part in Boarzell's epic. She was expecting another child for the following spring. This would be her seventh.
ONE:With the gas-light flaring on her raddled face, showing up mercilessly the tawdriness and shoddiness of her clothes, which reeked of a cheap scent, the boys did not find it hard to believe that she often had a struggle to "git off "indeed, it was a mystery how any man, however unfastidious, however fuddled, could kiss or take kisses from this bundle of rags and bones and paint. Caro seemed to notice the disparaging look.Alice nodded again.
TWO:"She wasted her time," said Reuben, "so I got shut of her."
TWO:"She! noshe w?an't git me."At last they came to Castweaselthree old cottages and a ruined one, leaning together in a hollow like mushrooms. Beside the ruined cottage a tree-trunk was lying, and Rose suddenly stretched herself with a little sigh.
TWO:"Don't be so excited, Ben," said Rose; "you've no business to come bursting in here like this."
THREE:The galleyman, for the first time, fixed his eyes upon Margaret, who was sitting, nursing her little charge within the recess of the chimney. She had latterly been accustomed to unkind language from her husband; but the bitterness with which he had now alluded to her before a stranger, brightened the delicacy of her complexion with a passing glow, and caused a sudden tear to tremble in her eye."Thanks, f?ather, but if you offered to give us to-day every penny you've got, I'd let you have no child of mine. Maybe we'll be poor and miserable and have to work hard, but he w?an't be one-half so wretched wud us as he'd be wud you. D'you think I disremember my own childhood and the way you m?ade us suffer? You're an old man, but you're heartyyou might live to a hundredand I'd justabout die of sorrow if I[Pg 442] thought any child of mine wur living wud you and being m?ade as miserable as you m?ade us. I'd rather see my boy dead than at Odiam."
THREE:The dawn broke over Boarzell like a reconciliation. The clamouring voices of wind and trees were still, and only a low sobbing came now and then from the woods. In the sky pale streamers of rose barred and striped a spreading violet. One or two clouds flew low, and slowly pilled themselves, scattering into the fields. On every blade of grass and twig of thorn, on every leaf and spine, glimmered pearls of rain, washing the air with a faint scent of stagnant water, perfuming it with the steams of sodden grass.
