red weathered face, looked very patient and bud-like. Tony's eyes
twinkled over them with a humorous helplessness, crossed occasionally
by a shade of impatience. So the three of them waited for the
household's source of energy to return. Tony had been wanting a glass
of beer. He nearly slept too.

Mam Widger said, when she did come, that they were 'all so big a fule
as one another.' "Casn' thee even get thy children off to bed?" she
asked.

"I can't help o'it," was Tony's reply.

[Sidenote: _LOSS OF TEMPER_]

She has taken the household affairs so completely on her shoulders that
he is almost helpless without her. In many ways, and in the better, the
biblical, sense of the word, he is still so childlike that he often
gets done for him what it would be useless for other people who have
little of the child in them, to expect. For the same reason, bullies
choose him out for attack. If I should happen to lose my temper with
him, it is a fault on my part, quickly repented of and quicker
forgiven, but a fault nevertheless. If he, on the other hand, loses his
temper with me, he merely says afterwards: "Ah! I be al'ays like
that--irritable like; I al'ays was an' I al'ays shall be to the end o'
the chapter." He assumes that there was no fault on his part, that his
loss of temper was simply the outcome of the nature of things and of
himself, and consequently that there was nothing to call for
forgiveness. The curious thing is that one feels his view to be right.
One does not _forgive_ children; nor the childlike spirit either.

Returning from sea one evening, more lazy than tired, he said: "You
wash me face, Mam, an' I'll wash me hands myself." His face was washed
amid shouts of laughter, and I tugged off his boots. We were all quite
pleased. Happy is the man for whom one can do that sort of thing!

Mrs Widger explained the other day at dinner that for a time after they
were married, Tony used to help a great deal with the housework, until
once, when he was doing something clumsily, she said: "Git 'long out
wi' 'ee, I can du that!"

"Iss," added Tony, "I used to scrub, and help her wi' the washing (an'
kiss her tu), but I ain't done nort to it since her spoke to me rough,
like that, an' now I be got out the way o'it, an' that's the reason
o'it--thic Mam 'Idger there!"

"G'out! 'tis thy...."

"Oh well, I du cuddle 'ee sometimes, when yu'm willing!"

13

Against the beach the listless sea made a sound like a rattle