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Updated: April 30, 2025
Three years and better we've kep' you out of charity, and you don't earn shoe leather yet. Where's the baby?" "Asleep in the garden, I put her down under the tree when I heard Susy cry out." "Then go and fetch her this minute. And a fine hiding you'll get when Fowley comes home. Susy's his favourite out of 'em all."
Fowley and two other women came in with a great outcry. And the sobbing child was wrapped in a big shawl, and the doctor sent for. And her mother, to relieve her own fears, began as usual to upbraid Dick. "It's all your fault, you good-for-nothing pauper! Why didn't you look after the child?"
Fowley, he said in a different tone, "You owe your child's life to this brave little lad. Now take care of him in return. He'll not be able to work for a good while, and he wants feeding up as well. He has no business to be so thin and ill-nourished. See that his hands are kept covered, and Susy's arm too. I'll send liniment down to-night for both.
Home lessons had small chance in Mrs. Fowley's presence, and the frequent excuses for keeping him at home had sadly interfered with his getting on, but in school no boy was happier than he. In the playground there might be taunts about his shabby clothes, and rough usage from the Fowley boys, that were hard to bear patiently. And he did not always succeed in keeping his temper down.
I told Fowley at the time it would come home to us, and it will." Noisily the children came in, clamoured for supper, and took it in their dirty hands, and then went to bed. Their father was helped home at closing time, too far gone to remember what had happened, but no Dick came in.
Dick Crosby took the one thick slice she offered, slipped the handle of the tin of tea on his arm, and with the big basin, tied up in a blue handkerchief, in his other hand, marched off in the direction of the tin works, while slatternly Mrs. Fowley went back into her cottage. "Only bread and dripping again," he muttered, "while they've all got cooked dinner. How good it smells!
But she said aloud, "He wants something to break down his spirit, Fowley, he ain't half so biddable as he used to be, and now he's passed the standard and can go to work, we shan't live for his pride and upstartness."
"Not for nothing!" said Dick, with a sudden flash of passionate indignation. "You had all father's money and kept it, and I've worked just like a slave besides. It's not I that am a thief." For a moment Fowley looked confounded, while his wife turned pale and shivered. Then, with a brutal laugh, he clutched the strap and reached forward.
Dick's face flushed hotly, and the small hard hand that held the dinner trembled with a passionate desire to fight the tormentors, among whom Tim Fowley, his cousin, laughed loudest. But his uncle was standing at the gate, and he had to hurry up with the dinner. His reward for good speed was a surly word from the man and a box on the ear, that made his head reel.
He was so sure the way would be made plain for him, and that his bondage would soon be at an end. "Impudent, is he?" said Fowley, with an ugly scowl on his face, as he turned to the corner where the cruel strap was hung, to be the terror of all the children. "I'll teach you manners, you young thief that we've kep' out of the workhouse and supported for nothing all these years."
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