‘You’m going to Mrs Moseley’s.’ ‘And why shouldn’t I go to Mrs Moseley’s? You can’t stop me!’ ‘Stay with us to-night, Abner,’ she coaxed. Abner only laughed at her. Then she flew into a passion, standing up white and trembling at the side of the table. ‘How can you go to Mrs Moseley’s?’ she cried. ‘Who’s Mrs Moseley, I should like to know? You’re all cracked on your Mrs Moseley, you and your father! That fat old woman in her nasty smelly house! And you didn’t ought to leave me when I want you. You didn’t ought to! I’m your mother . . ‘ ‘Oh, you’m my mother, are you?’ Abner burst into a laugh. ‘That’s bloody funny, that is!’ ‘Oh, you and your swearing . . .’ she cried. He didn’t wait to hear any more. When he was gone she fell down on her knees beside the table and sobbed with her head in her hands: a frail, pathetic figure with her hair in curling rags. Her sobs woke the baby, whose cradle had been carefully placed in a draught between the open door and the fireplace. ‘Oh, you now!’ she cried, rocking the cradle roughly. She might easily have upset it. Then, suddenly repenting, she picked up her son tenderly, and hugging him to her breast, buried her sobs in his downy face. The Fourth Chapter AS the autumn hardened into an iron winter Abner had less time than ever to spend on these distractions. When the football season opened he began to play for the little club named Halesby Swifts, from which Mawne United usually drew its recruits. Technically it was a professional club, but the gate money that it drew from its adventures in pursuit of the local charity cups did no more than pay for the boots and clothes and footballs of the players. In the first round of the North Bromwich Hospital Cup competition the Swifts had the good luck to be drawn against their big neighbours, Mawne United, on the Mawne ground, and Abner, playing centre-half, repeated the exploit of his childhood by scoring a goal against the goalkeeper who had succeeded the celebrated Harper. It was an elevating moment. The captain and others of the Swifts came running up to Abner and wrung his hand. All Mawne and Halesby on the touchline waved black bowler hats under the flag of Mawne United languidly flying from its staff beside the Royal Oak. A great moment! Abner did not see his father standing in his old place behind the Mawne goal posts with his hands thrust into the pockets of his reefer coat and his eyes sparkling as he puffed away at his black clay pipe. That was how John Fellows showed his emotion. Later in the evening he showed it in another way.