She knew at once from the wan look of him that he had been tramping all day on an empty stomach. That, with all his faults, was Ern. So long as there was a crumb in the cupboard she and the children should share it: he would tighten his belt. Even now he just sat down, an obviously beaten man, and did not ask for a bite. What she had she put before him; and it was not much.
"Any luck, Ern?" she asked with a touch of tenderness.
"Walked my bloody legs off on an empty belly, and got a mouthful of insults at the end of it," he muttered. "That's all I got. That's all they give the working man in Old England. Joe's right. Sink the country! Blast the bloody Empire! That's all it's good for!"
It was the first time he had ever used bad language in her presence. That gradual demoralisation which unemployment, however caused, and its consequences brings inevitably in its train was already showing its corrupt fruits. The tragedy of it moved her.
"I met him," he answered. He was warmer after his meal, less sullen, and drew up his chair from habit before the fireless range. "He wants me to go North--to his folk. Says his brother-in-law can find me a job. Runs a motor-transport business in Oldham."
"Does he?" she asked quietly. "What about me and my children?"
Ruth was still as a mouse awaiting the cat's pounce.
Ruth stirred again and resumed her quiet busyness.
"Alf's been up again," she told him. "Messin round."
Mrs. Trubb happened on Ernie's mother next day in Church Street. The surgeon's wife, whenever she met Mrs. Edward Caspar, acted always deliberately on the assumption, which she knew to be unfounded, that relations between Ruth and her mother-in-law were normal.
"It's a nuisance this about Ernie," she now said. "Such a worry for Ruth."
The hard woman with the snow-white hair and fierce black eye-brows made a little sardonic moue.
"She's all right," she answered. "You needn't worry for her. There's a chap payin her rent."
"You mayn't believe it," retorted the other sourly. "It's true all the same. Alf's her landlord. He told me."
Mrs. Trupp, greatly perturbed, reported the matter to her husband. He tackled Alf, who at the moment was driving for his old employer again in the absence of the regular chauffeur.
