"Oh dear! I wish I knew whose fault it is!" bewailed Mrs. Todhetley. "What more did the driver say, Thomas?" "Well, ma'am, _he_ said it must be the men's fault--because there the work is, still a-waiting for 'em, and they won't do it." "The condition the poor children must be in!" "Like hungry wolves," said old Thomas. "'Twas what Ford called 'em, and he ought to know: own brother to Ford the baker, as lives in the very thick of the trouble!" Scarcely anything was talked of that evening but the strike. Its long continuance half frightened some of us. Old Coney, coming in to smoke his pipe with the Squire, pulled a face as long as his arm at the poor-rate prospect: the Squire wondered how much work would stay in the country. It was said the weekly allowance made to the men was not so much as it had been at first. It was also said that the Society, making it, considered Crabb Lane in general had been particularly improvident in spending the allowance, or it would not have been reduced to its present distressed condition. Which was not to be wondered at, in Mr. Coney's opinion: people used to very good wages, he said, could not all at once pull up habits and look at every farthing as a miser does. Crabb Lane was reproachfully assured by the Society that other strikes had kept themselves quite respectable, comparatively speaking, upon just the same allowance, and had not parted with _all_ their pots and pans. That night I dreamt of the strike. It's as true as that I am writing this. I dreamt I saw thousands and thousands of red-faced men--not pale-faced ones--each tossing a loaf of bread up and down. "I suppose I may go over and see Eliza," I said to Mrs. Todhetley, after breakfast in the morning. "There is no reason why you should not, Johnny, that I know of," she answered, after a pause. "Excepting the cold." As if I minded the cold! "I hope the whole lot, she and the young ones, won't look like skeletons, that's all. Tod, will you come?" "Not if I know it, old fellow. I have no fancy for seeing skeletons." "Oh, that was all my nonsense." "I know that. A pleasant journey to you." The hoar frost had gathered on the trees, the ice hung fantastically from their branches: it was altogether a beautiful sight. Groups of Miss Timmens's girls, coming to school with frozen noses, were making slides as they ran. As to Crabb Lane, it looked nearly deserted: the cold kept the men indoors. Knocking at Hoar's door with a noise like a fire-engine, I went in with a leap. The scene I came upon brought me up short. Just at first I did not understand it. In the self-same corner by the fireplace where Dicky's bed had been that first day, was a bed now, and Eliza lay on it: and by her side, wedged against the wall, was what looked like a bundle of green baize with a calico nightcap on. The children--and really and truly they were not much better than living skeletons--sat on the floor. "What's to do here, you little mites? Is mother ill?"