Fisher had hitherto managed, to the intense surprise of every one, to keep out of the workhouse. He would be taken on for a job of work now and then; but manufacturers were chary of employing Joe Fisher. For one thing, he gave way to drink. A disreputable-looking object had he become: a tattered coat and waistcoat, pantaloons in rags, and not the ghost of a shirt. People wondered how he found money for drink. "Who'll give us house-room?" was his salutation, as he pushed himself in, his eyes haggard, his legs unsteady, his face thin from incipient famine. "Will nobody give us a corner to lie in?" The men took their pipes from their mouths. "Turned out at last, Joe?" "Turned out," replied Joe. "And my missis close upon her down-lying." Mrs. Cross, who was at the back of the kitchen, washing out her potato saucepan, of which frugal edible, seasoned with salt, the family dinner had consisted, put in her word. "You couldn't expect nothing else, Joe Fisher. There you have been, in them folks' furnished room, paying nothing, and paying nothing, and you drinking everlasting. They have threatened you long enough. Last week, you know, they took a vow you should go this." "Where's the wife and little 'uns?" asked meek Timothy Carter. "You can look at 'em," responded Fisher. "They're not a hundred miles off. They bain't out of view." He gave a flourish of his hand towards the road, and the men and Mrs. Cross crowded to the door to reconnoitre. In the middle of the lane, crouched down in its mud, for the weather had been bad, and it was very wet under foot, was untidy Sukey Fisher--a woman all skin and bone now, her face hopeless and desperate. She wore no cap, and her matted hair fell on to her gown--such a gown! all tatters and dirt. Several young children huddled around her. "Untidy creature!" muttered Mrs. Cross to herself. "She is as fond of a drop as her lazy, quarrelsome husband; and this is what they have brought it to between 'em! Them poor little objects of young 'uns 'ud be as well dead as alive." "Look at 'em!" began Fisher. "And they call this a free country! They call it a country as is a pattern to others and a refuge for the needy. Why don't Government, that opened our ports to them foreign French and keeps 'em open, come down and take a look at my wife squatting there?--turned out of our room without a place to put our heads into!" "If you hadn't put quite as much inside your head, Joe Fisher, and been doing of it for years, you might have had more for the outside on't now," again spoke Mrs. Cross in her sharp tones. The woman was not naturally sharp, as were some in Honey Fair; but the miserable fear she lived in, added to their present privations, told upon her temper. "Hold your magging," said Joe Fisher. "I never like to quarrel with petticuts, one's own belongings excepted. All as I say, Mother Cross, is, don't _you_ mag." Mrs. Cross made no reply to this, and Fisher resumed.