“Well, for my part,” said the crone, “meat’s my grievance: all the best bits go to the butties, and the pieces with bone in are chopped off for the colliers’ wives.”
“Dame, when will the door open?” asked a very little palefaced boy. “I have been here all this morn, and never broke my fast.”
“I want a loaf for mother; but I don’t feel I shall ever get home again, I’m all in a way so dizzy.”
“Liza Gray,” said a woman with black beady eyes and a red nose, speaking in a sharp voice and rushing up to a pretty slatternly woman in a straw bonnet with a dirty fine ribbon, and a babe at her breast; “you know the person I’m looking for.”
“Well, Mrs Mullins, and how do you do?” she replied, “in a sweet sawney tone.”
“How do you do, indeed! How are people to do in these bad times?”
“They is indeed hard Mrs Mullins. If you could see my tommy book! How I wish I knew figures! Made up as of last Thursday night by that little divil, Master Joe Diggs. He has stuck it in here and stuck it in there, till it makes one all of a-maze. I’m sure I never had the things; and my man is out of all patience, and says I can no more keep house than a natural born.”
“My man is a-wanting to see your man,” said Mrs Mullins, with a flashing eye; “and you know what about.”
“And very natural, too,” said Liza Gray; “but how are we to pay the money we owe him, with such a tommy-book as this, good neighbour Mullins?”
“We’re as poor as our neighbours Mrs Gray; and if we are not paid, we must borrow. It’s a scarlet shame to go to the spout because money lent to a friend is not to be found. You had it in your need, Liza Gray, and we want it in our need; and have it I will, Liza Gray.”
“Hush, hush!” said Liza Gray; “don’t wake the little-un, for she is very fretful.”
“I will have the five shillings, or I will have as good,” said Mrs Mullins.
“Hush, hush, neighbour; now, I’ll tell you--you shall have it; but yet a little time. This is great tommy-day, and settles our reckoning for five weeks; but my man may have a draw after to-morrow, and he shall draw five shillings, and give you half.”
“Ah! the other half,” said Liza Gray, with a sigh. “Well, then--we shall have a death in our family soon--this poor babe can’t struggle on much longer; it belongs to two burial clubs--that will be three pounds from each, and after the drink and the funeral, there will be enough to pay all our debts and put us all square.”