She was white and heaving. "Yes, my Ern! He's down and out, and you take advantage to come up here behind his back and insult him--and me. You're the one to call anudder man a no-man, aren't you?" Taking the bag of money she tossed it at him with a flinging scorn that was magnificent. "Take your filth away--and yourself with it!" He went, humbled and ashamed. She watched him go--this sanguine, well-conditioned man, with his good boots, his sensible clothes, his air of solid prosperity. Then she sat down, spent. Her savagery had been largely defensive. Like the brave soldier she was she had attacked to hide the weakness of her guard. She was sick at heart; worn out. These men ... first Alf, then Joe ... This champing boar, foam in the corner of his lips ... that red-eyed weasel squealing on the trail.... An hour later Ern came home. She knew at once from the wan look of him that he had been tramping all day on an empty stomach. That, with all his faults, was Ern. So long as there was a crumb in the cupboard she and the children should share it: he would tighten his belt. Even now he just sat down, an obviously beaten man, and did not ask for a bite. What she had she put before him; and it was not much. "Any luck, Ern?" she asked with a touch of tenderness. Sullenly he shook his head. "Walked my bloody legs off on an empty belly, and got a mouthful of insults at the end of it," he muttered. "That's all I got. That's all they give the working man in Old England. Joe's right. Sink the country! Blast the bloody Empire! That's all it's good for!" It was the first time he had ever used bad language in her presence. That gradual demoralisation which unemployment, however caused, and its consequences brings inevitably in its train was already showing its corrupt fruits. The tragedy of it moved her. "Joe's been up," she said after a bit. "I met him," he answered. He was warmer after his meal, less sullen, and drew up his chair from habit before the fireless range. "He wants me to go North--to his folk. Says his brother-in-law can find me a job. Runs a motor-transport business in Oldham." Her back was to him at the moment. "Does he?" she asked quietly. "What about me and my children?" "That's what I says to him." "What did he say?" "Said he'd look after you and them." Ruth was still as a mouse awaiting the cat's pounce. "And what did you say to that?" "Told him to go to hell." Ruth stirred again and resumed her quiet busyness. "Alf's been up again," she told him. "Messin round." CHAPTER XIX PITCHED BATTLE Mrs. Trubb happened on Ernie's mother next day in Church Street. The surgeon's wife, whenever she met Mrs. Edward Caspar, acted always deliberately on the assumption, which she knew to be unfounded, that relations between Ruth and her mother-in-law were normal. "It's a nuisance this about Ernie," she now said. "Such a worry for Ruth."