The lad lounged easily along with his cap on the back of his head, his hands in his breeches pockets, and his pipe in his mouth; but the women bore burthens—one a bundle of brushwood on her head, the other a sack of potatoes—and as they reached the bridge they stopped to rest them awhile on its old brick parapet. “’Old yer row, do!” the boy was saying. “What do it matter to you whether old Jeremiah ’ave a-turned me off agin or no? Ain’t I my own master?” “Oh, ye’re yer own master safe enough,” retorted the woman, a sharp-featured body of middle age. “There ain’t nobody as ’ll worrit ’emselves much over ye now ye’ve put yer pore mother underground. If that’s what ye wanted when ye set to work to break ’er ’eart, why ye’ve got it.” “Well, I want it now anyways,” retorted the lad with a brutal laugh. “You’re an ungrateful beast, that’s what ye are!” said the woman shrilly. “I’d ’ave guv ye bite and sup for a night or two, for my pore sister’s sake, till ye got work again; but I shan’t now.” “Nobody asted ye to!” laughed the lad. “When ye guv me a shake-down before ye said ye did it for ’er, but ye wanted my earnin’s all the same. And when I was turned off the farm ye turned me out in the road. I’d sooner shift for myself, thank ye!” “Do it, then!” retorted the woman. “It looks like it, it do, and you sent adrift agin this very night! Lord, to think the devil o’ drink can get into a lad afore ’e’s forgot ’is mother’s milk!” “If you don’t stop that jaw I’ll——” began the boy. But the other woman laid a hand on his arm. She had a fresher, plumper, kindlier face than her neighbour, and she gave him a little friendly push as she whispered— “There, now, there, she’s yer own mother’s sister ye know. You go ’ome.” “Mother’s sister be damned,” said the lad irreverently. “She’s come that dodge over me long enough. She wouldn’t lift a finger to ’elp me, and I won’t ’ave no more of ’er preachments. I ain’t got no one to think of, and what I earns I’ll spend as I please.” “A jolly lot you ever did hanything else,” began the aunt afresh, but the neighbour stopped her mouth. “Now you go ’ome, Nat, you go on ’ome,” reiterated she to the boy; and “Can’t ye see as yer on’y aggrawatin’ the lad, Mary Ann?” she whispered to the woman. “Let ’im be, do! Maybe ’e misses his ’ome and his pore mother more than you thinks for.” But Nat laughed as he blew the ashes from his pipe. “Ye needn’t trouble to speak up for me, marm,” he sneered. “Lord, she don’t ’urt me, bless you,” and he snapped his fingers in the direction of his relative. “A precious sight I ever cared for the women-folk’s jaw. Oh, yes, I’ll go _’ome_,” and something that somehow did not belong to the scowl flitted across the passionate young face that self-indulgence had so sorrowfully marred. “I’ll go _’ome_! But where I goes there I bides—ye ’ear that? No one ain’t got no right to interfere wi’ me. I won’t never darken _your_ doors no more, and if I’m a-goin’ to the devil I’ll go my own way.”