or choice.
To look at him and old Gaunt, one would not have thought they could be
son and father, a relationship indeed ever dubious. As for his wife, she
had been dead twelve years. Some said he had joked her out of life,
others that she had gone into consumption. He was a reader--perhaps the
only one in all the village, and could whistle like a blackbird. To work
hard, but without too great method, to drink hard, but with perfect
method, and to talk nineteen to the dozen anywhere except at home--was
his mode of life. In a word, he was a 'character.'

Old Gaunt sat down in a wooden rocking-chair, and spoke.

"Sir Gerald 'e've a-just passed."

"Sir Gerald 'e can goo to hell. They'll know un there, by 'is little
ears."

"'E've a-spoke about us stoppin'; so as Mettie goes out to sarvice."

"'E've a-spoke about what 'e don't know 'bout, then. Let un do what they
like, they can't put Tom Gaunt about; he can get work anywhere--Tom Gaunt
can, an' don't you forget that, old man."

The old man, placing his thin brown hands on his knees, was silent. And
thoughts passed through and through him. 'If so be as Tom goes, there'll
be no one as'll take me in for less than three bob a week. Two bob a
week, that's what I'll 'ave to feed me--Two bob a week--two bob a week!
But if so be's I go with Tom, I'll 'ave to reg'lar sit down under he for
me bread and butter.' And he contemplated his son.

"Where are you goin', then?" he said.

Tom Gaunt rustled the greenish paper he was reading, and his little, hard
gray eyes fixed his father.

"Who said I was going?"

Old Gaunt, smoothing and smoothing the lined, thin cheeks of the
parchmenty, thin-nosed face that Frances Freeland had thought to be
almost like a gentleman's, answered: "I thart you said you was goin'."

"You think too much, then--that's what 'tis. You think too much, old
man."

With a slight deepening of the sardonic patience in his face, old Gaunt
rose, took a bowl and spoon down from a shelf, and very slowly proceeded
to make himself his evening meal. It consisted of crusts of bread soaked
in hot water and tempered with salt, pepper, onion, and a touch of
butter. And while he waited, crouched over the kettle, his son smoked
his grayish clay and read his greenish journal; an old clock ticked and a
little cat purred without provocation on the ledge of the tight-closed
window. Then the door opened and the rogue-girl appeared. She shook her
shoulders as