“An’ I ’aven’t—that I ’aven’t. You b’lieve me, I’ve ’ad very little this day, I have an’ all.” His voice went tender. “Here, an’ I browt thee a bit o’ brandysnap, an’ a cocoanut for th’ children.” He laid the gingerbread and the cocoanut, a hairy object, on the table. “Nay, tha niver said thankyer for nowt i’ thy life, did ter?”
As a compromise, she picked up the cocoanut and shook it, to see if it had any milk.
“It’s a good ’un, you may back yer life o’ that. I got it fra’ Bill Hodgkisson. ‘Bill,’ I says, ‘tha non wants them three nuts, does ter? Arena ter for gi’ein’ me one for my bit of a lad an’ wench?’ ‘I ham, Walter, my lad,’ ’e says; ‘ta’e which on ’em ter’s a mind.’ An’ so I took one, an’ thanked ’im. I didn’t like ter shake it afore ’is eyes, but ’e says, ‘Tha’d better ma’e sure it’s a good un, Walt.’ An’ so, yer see, I knowed it was. He’s a nice chap, is Bill Hodgkisson, ’e’s a nice chap!”
“A man will part with anything so long as he’s drunk, and you’re drunk along with him,” said Mrs. Morel.
“Eh, tha mucky little ’ussy, who’s drunk, I sh’d like ter know?” said Morel. He was extraordinarily pleased with himself, because of his day’s helping to wait in the Moon and Stars. He chattered on.
Mrs. Morel, very tired, and sick of his babble, went to bed as quickly as possible, while he raked the fire.
Mrs. Morel came of a good old burgher family, famous independents who had fought with Colonel Hutchinson, and who remained stout Congregationalists. Her grandfather had gone bankrupt in the lace-market at a time when so many lace-manufacturers were ruined in Nottingham. Her father, George Coppard, was an engineer—a large, handsome, haughty man, proud of his fair skin and blue eyes, but more proud still of his integrity. Gertrude resembled her mother in her small build. But her temper, proud and unyielding, she had from the Coppards.
George Coppard was bitterly galled by his own poverty. He became foreman of the engineers in the dockyard at Sheerness. Mrs. Morel—Gertrude—was the second daughter. She favoured her mother, loved her mother best of all; but she had the Coppards’ clear, defiant blue eyes and their broad brow. She remembered to have hated her father’s overbearing manner towards her gentle, humorous, kindly-souled mother. She remembered running over the breakwater at Sheerness and finding the boat. She remembered to have been petted
