y, though looking all the while as wise as a dwarf with a large
old-fashioned head and body on the most abbreviated legs.

"Why, you've got a family, I see, Mr. Massey?" said Adam, smiling, as
he came into the kitchen. "How's that? I thought it was against the law
here."

"Law? What's the use o' law when a man's once such a fool as to let a
woman into his house?" said Bartle, turning away from the hamper with
some bitterness. He always called Vixen a woman, and seemed to have lost
all consciousness that he was using a figure of speech. "If I'd known
Vixen was a woman, I'd never have held the boys from drowning her; but
when I'd got her into my hand, I was forced to take to her. And now you
see what she's brought me to--the sly, hypocritical wench"--Bartle spoke
these last words in a rasping tone of reproach, and looked at Vixen, who
poked down her head and turned up her eyes towards him with a keen
sense of opprobrium--"and contrived to be brought to bed on a Sunday at
church-time. I've wished again and again I'd been a bloody minded man,
that I could have strangled the mother and the brats with one cord."

"I'm glad it was no worse a cause kept you from church," said Adam. "I
was afraid you must be ill for the first time i' your life. And I was
particularly sorry not to have you at church yesterday."

"Ah, my boy, I know why, I know why," said Bartle kindly, going up to
Adam and raising his hand up to the shoulder that was almost on a level
with his own head. "You've had a rough bit o' road to get over since I
saw you--a rough bit o' road. But I'm in hopes there are better times
coming for you. I've got some news to tell you. But I must get my supper
first, for I'm hungry, I'm hungry. Sit down, sit down."

Bartel went into his little pantry, and brought out an excellent
home-baked loaf; for it was his one extravagance in these dear times
to eat bread once a-day instead of oat-cake; and he justified it by
observing, that what a schoolmaster wanted was brains, and oat-cake ran
too much to bone instead of brains. Then came a piece of cheese and a
quart jug with a crown of foam upon it. He placed them all on the
round deal table which stood against his large arm-chair in the
chimney-corner, with Vixen's hamper on one side of it and a window-shelf
with a few books piled up in it on the other. The table was as clean as
if Vixen had been an excellent housewife in a checkered apron; so was
the quarry floor; and the old car