Sir George Tressady — Volume II by Ward, Humphry, Mrs., 1851-1920

"Oh! I will do all I can--all I can!" Marcella repeated in a low, passionate voice, as one who makes a vow to her own heart.

"But after to-morrow he will not willingly come across us again," said Maxwell, quietly. "That I saw."

She gave a sad and wordless assent.

CHAPTER XXIII

Letty Tressady sat beside the doorway of one of the small red-brick houses that make up the village of Ferth. It was a rainy October afternoon, and through the door she could see the black main street --houses and road alike bedabbled in wet and mire. At one point in the street her eye caught a small standing crowd of women and children, most of them with tattered shawls thrown over their heads to protect them from the weather. She knew what it meant. They were waiting for the daily opening of the soup kitchen, started in the third week of the great strike by the Baptist minister, who, in the language of the Tory paper, was "among the worst firebrands of the district." There was another soup kitchen further down, to which George had begun to subscribe immediately on his return to the place. She had thought it a foolish act on his part thus to help his own men to fight him the better. But--now, as she watched the miserable crowd outside the Baptist chapel, she felt the teasing pressure of those new puzzles of her married life which had so far done little else, it seemed, than take away her gaiety and her power of amusing herself.

Near her sat an oldish woman with an almost toothless mouth, who was chattering to her in a tone that Letty knew to be three parts hypocritical.

"Well, the treuth is the men is that fool 'ardy when they gets a thing into their yeds, there's no taakin wi un. There's plenty as done like the strike, my lady, but they dursent say so--they'd be afeard o' losin the skin off their backs, for soom o' them lads o' Burrows's is a routin rough lot as done keer what they doos to a mon, an yo canna exspeck a quiet body to stan up agen 'em. Now, my son, ee comes in at neet all slamp and downcast, an I says to 'im, 'Is there noa news yet o' the Jint Committee, John?' I ses to un. 'Noa, mither,' ee says, 'they're just keepin ov it on.' An ee do seem so down'earted when ee sees the poor soart ov a supper as is aw I can gie un to 'is stomach. Now, _I'm_ wun o' thoase as _wants_ nuthin. The doctor ses, 'Yo've got no blude in yer, Missus 'Ammersley, what 'ull yer 'ave?' An I says, '_Nuthin!_ it's sun cut, an it's sun cooked, _nuthin!_' Noa, I've niver bin on t' parish--an I _might_--times. An I don't 'old wi strikes. Lor, it is a poor pleace, is ours--ain't it?--an nobbut a bit o' bread an drippin for supper."