It was about eight o'clock that I was sitting by the parlour fire, with the wife working and very quiet, when Luke came in from the workshop with a book under his arm, for he had been totting up the men's piecework, and what was due to them; and the sight of him made me feel as if I must quarrel. He saw it too, but he said nothing, only put the accounts away and began to read. The wife saw the storm brewing, and she knew how put out I was, for I had not lit my pipe, nor yet had my evening nap, which I always have after tea. So she did what she knew so well how to do--filled my pipe, forced it into my hand, and just as I was going to dash it to pieces in the ashes, she gave me one of her old looks, kissed me on the forehead, as with one hand she pressed me back into my chair, and then with the other she lit a splint and held it to my tobacco. I was done. She always gets over me like that; and after smoking in silence for half-an-hour, I was lying back, with my eyes closed, dropping off to sleep, when my wife said--what had gone before I hadn't heard-- "Yes, he's asleep now." That woke me up of course, and if I didn't lie there shamming and heard all they said in a whisper! "How came you to make him more vexed than he was, Luke?" says the wife; and he told her. "I couldn't do it, mother," he said, excitedly. "It was heart-breaking. She's living in a wretched room there with her daughter; and, mother, when I saw her I felt as if--there, I can't tell you." "Go on, Luke," she said. "They're half-starved," he said in a husky way. "Oh, mother! it's horrible. Such a sweet, beautiful girl, and the poor woman herself dying almost with some terrible disease." The wife sighed. "They told me," he went on, "how hard they had tried to live by ordinary needlework, and failed, and that as a last resource they had tried to get the machine." "Poor things!" says the wife; "but are you sure the mother was a lady?" "A clergyman's widow," says Luke hastily; "there isn't a doubt about it. Poor girl! and they've got to learn to use it before it will be of any use." "Poor _girl_, Luke?" says the wife softly; and I saw through my eyelashes that she laid a hand upon his arm, and was looking curiously at him, when if he didn't cover his face with his hands, rest his elbows on the table, and give a low groan! Then the old woman got up, stood behind his chair, and began playing with and caressing his hair like the foolish old mother would. "Mother," he says suddenly, "will you go and see them?" She didn't answer for a minute, only stood looking down at him, and then said softly-- "They paid you the first money?" "No," he says hotly. "I hadn't the heart to take it." "Then that money you paid was yours, Luke?"