"There's no common decency about the man in my opinion," he said. "Goodjer take him! He's like a sulky boy and pretends that facts ban't facts, while every day of the week shows they are. And patience is very well, but it don't make you any younger. Here I've pleased him by promising to stop another month, and when I did that, I had a right to think it would break down his temper and stop the silly rummage he talks about a thankless child and so on. You know how he goes on--chittering at me and Susan, but never to us--just letting out as if he was talking to the fire, or the warming-pan on the wall--of course for us to hear." "He's took it very hard no doubt. Of course it's a shatterer. He didn't know his luck; and when you suddenly see your luck, for the first time just afore it's going to be taken away from you, it makes you a bit wild," explained Lawrence. "Let him be wild with himself then, and cuss himself--not us. Look at it--I meet his convenience and go on so mild as Moses, working harder than ever, and all I get be sighs and head-shakings; and you always see his lips saying 'sarpent' to himself every time you catch his eye. It's properly ondacent, because there's duties staring the man in the face and he's trying his damnedest to wriggle out of 'em!" "What duties?" "Why, his daughter's wedding, I should think! Surely it's up to him, whatever he feels against it, to give the woman a fatherly send off. Not that I care a cuss, and should be the better pleased if he wasn't there glumping and glowering and letting all men see he hated the job; but Susan be made of womanly feeling, and she reckons he did ought to come to the church and give her away, all nice and suent, same as other parents do. And after that there ought to be a rally of neighbours and some pretty eating and drinking, and good wishes and an old shoe for luck when us goes off to the station man and wife. And why the hell not?" "I dare say it will work out like that. You must allow for the shock, Tom. He'd got to rely on you and your future wife like his right and left hand; and to have the pair of you snatched away together---- He's a man with a power of looking forward and, of course, he can see, in a way you can't, what he'll feel like when you both vanish off the scene." "You be always his side." "No, no--not in this matter, anyway. I know very well what you feel like, and nobody wishes you joy better than me. You've got a grand wife, and I've always thought a lot of you myself as you know. But 'tis just the great good fortune that's fallen to you makes it so much the worse for him. He knows what he's losing, and you can't expect him to be pleased. He'll calm down in a week or two." "Let the man do the same then and take another. There's a very fine woman waiting for him." "There is; and he'll take her no doubt; but there again, he knows that you can't have anything for nothing." "He had his daughter for nothing."