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Mrs M'Swat was faithful to him, contented and good-natured, and bore uncomplainingly, year after year, that most cruelly agonising of human duties childbirth, and did more for her nation and her Maker than I will ever be noble enough to do. But I could not help it that their life was warping my very soul.
He has got himself into great debt and difficulties, and would have been sold off again but for Peter M'Swat. You will remember Peter M'Swat? Well, he has been good enough to lend your father 500 pounds at 4 per cent, which means 20 pounds per year interest. Your father would have no more idea of meeting this amount than a cat would have.
Mrs M'Swat remarked contentedly that it always took a couple of days to wear "off of" things. After "dinner" I asked for a bottle of ink and some paper, and scrawled a few lines to grannie and my mother, merely reporting my safe arrival at my destination. I determined to take time to collect my thoughts before petitioning for release from Barney's Gap.
I respected him right enough in his place, as I trust he respected me in mine, but though fate thought fit for the present to place us in the one groove, yet our lives were unmixable commodities as oil and water, which lay apart and would never meet until taken in hand by the omnipotent leveller death. Marriage with Peter M'Swat!
Some of them told me they would come to see me, but not Mrs M'Swat, as she always allowed the children to be as rude to them as they pleased.
The table for tea was set exactly as it had been before, and was lighted by a couple of tallow candles made from bad fat, and their odour was such as my jockey travelling companion of the day before would have described as a tough smell. "Give us a toon on the peeany," said Mrs M'Swat after the meal, when the dishes had been cleared away by Lizer and Rose Jane.
She grabbed the meat, and wiping it on her greasy apron, carried it around in her hand until she found a plate for it, and by that time the children had collected the other things. A cup was broken, and another, also a poley, was put in its stead. Mr M'Swat now appeared, and after taking a nip out of a rum bottle which he produced from a cupboard in the corner, he invited me to sit up to dinner.
"Yes," said pa; "and I'm a richer man today than them as didn't do it." "Liza, do not put a whole slice of bread to your mouth like that, and cram so. Cut it into small pieces." "Ma doesn't," returned Liza. "Ye'll have yer work cut out with 'em," laughed Mrs M'Swat, who did not know how to correct her family herself, and was too ignorant to uphold my authority.
So with the dolt and the man of brain, so with Mrs M'Swat and me. The fact of not only my own but my family's dependence on M'Swat sank into oblivion. I merely recognized that she was one human being and I another.
Mrs M'Swat had but one boiler in which to do all her cooking, and one small tub for the washing, and there was seldom anything to cat but bread and beef; and this was not because they were poor, but because they did not know, or want to know, any better.
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