He went back in the dark to Wolfpits, heavily burdened with the second part of his task. The children were playing quietly on the hearthrug and Mrs Mumble, who considered it only neighbourly to give Mary the benefit of her company in a domestic emergency, was talking of homely, unimportant things with the idea of distracting her mind from the more tragic affair that held it. When Abner appeared she excused herself, kissed the children good-night, enveloped Mary in a more significant embrace, and left them. Mary stood waiting for what he had to say. He could not help recognising the contrast between her impressive aloofness, her self-control, and the hysterics of old Mrs Malpas. She could not pretend that she felt nothing; since George’s disaster, however little she might care for him, must bring with it all sorts of complications. She was a woman who had been used, in the lavish days of her father, to a certain degree of comfort and elegance, and even if she had known hard times at Wolfpits during George’s freakish periods of idleness, she had never been faced with anything so threatening to herself and her children as a complete stoppage of wages and, in the last resort, the humiliation of parish relief. She waited with her head erect, straight as a larch, in the perfect control of her finely-tempered mind. ‘It’s what we thought it would be, missus,’ he said. ‘Manslaughter they brought it in.’ ‘Where is he?’ she asked, almost in a whisper. ‘They’ve took him in charge. That’ll mean the lock-up at Lesswardine, time they’ve got the case ready for the police-court.’ She was silent for a moment, and then:— ‘Does he want me to see him?’ ‘He didn’t say nought of that.’ ‘No,’ she said reflectively. ‘He said: “Tell ’em that I’m all right,”’ Abner explained. ‘Nowt else.’ ‘_Them_?’ ‘That’s his mother . . .’ ‘Ah!’ She stiffened a little, and Abner, scenting a new hostility, continued: ‘This business bain’t all George’s fault. It’s a bit of bad luck that might have happened to any one. It might just as well a’ been me . . . as well and better. If that Bastard hadn’t gone at me from behind George’d never have touched him.’ ‘If he’d been home here,’ she interrupted, with a sudden energy, ‘it wouldn’t have happened at all. It’s drink that’s done for George,’ she added. ‘He hadn’t a drap in him,’ said Abner loyally. ‘He was as sober as I am this minute. He hadn’t set foot in the place not half an hour.’ She was silent for a moment, and then, with a curious directness, asked: ‘Where had he been then?’ ‘How should I know where he’d been? I don’t meddle or mak in George’s affairs.’ She pressed him: ‘Didn’t it come out at the inquest where he’d been?’ He saw how things were going, and lied brazenly in George’s defence. ‘No,’ he said.