‘Can’t you speak?’ shrilled Mrs. Clay. ‘If you don’t do something, I let you know that I shall! I’m not going to stand this kind o’ thing, don’t think it. If they talk ill of you they’ll do the same of me. It’s time that devil had something for himself. You might be made o’ stone! I only hope I may meet him in the streets, that’s all! I’ll show him up, see if I don’t! I’ll let all the people know what he is, the cur! I’ll do something to make him give me in charge, and then I’ll tell it all out before the magistrates. I don’t care what comes, I’ll find some way of paying out that beast!’ Emma turned angrily. ‘Hold your tongue, Kate! If you go on like this day after day we shall have to part; I can’t put up with it, so there now! I’ve begged and prayed you to stop, and you don’t pay the least heed to me; I think you might have more kindness. You’ll never make me say a single word about him, do what you will; I’ve told you that many a time, and I mean what I say. Let him say what he likes and do what he likes. It’s nothing to me, and it doesn’t concern you. You’ll drive me out of the house again, like you did the other night. I can’t bear it. Do you understand, Kate?--I can’t bear it!’ Her voice shook, and there were tears of uttermost shame and misery in her eyes. The children sitting at the table, though accustomed to scenes of this kind, looked at the disputants with troubled faces, and at length the younger began to cry. Emma at once turned to the little one with smiles of re-assurance. Kate would have preferred to deal slaps, but contented herself with taking a cup of tea to the fireside, and sulking for half an hour. Emma unrolled the bundle of work, and soon the hum of the sewing-machine began, to continue late into the night. CHAPTER XIX You remember that one side of the valley in which stood New Wanley was clad with trees. Through this wood a public path made transverse ascent to the shoulder of the bill, a way little used save by Wanley ramblers in summer time. The section of the wood above the path was closed against trespassers; among the copses below anyone might freely wander. In places it was scarcely possible to make a way for fern, bramble, and underwood, but elsewhere mossy tracks led one among hazels or under arches of foliage which made of the mid-day sky a cool, golden shimmer. One such track, abruptly turning round a great rock over the face of which drooped the boughs of an ash, came upon a little sloping lawn, which started from a high hazel-covered bank. The bank itself was so shaped as to afford an easy seat, shaded even when the grass in front was all sunshine.