"A bargain is a bargain, mates, and I shall keep you to your word; if you don't hear me out--no song. I'm going to talk about my little Meg; and if you don't know why I am quiet-like now, you will before I have done. Once I had as nice a home as any man need wish for, and the girl I brought to it was the right sort, I can tell you; none of your flashy, dressy, empty-headed ones, but a right down decent hard-working maid she was. But she was religious, always wanted to go to church or chapel, or what not, on the Sunday, and I didn't care for that; so I told her, 'Alice,' says I, 'you have married me, and you'll have to stick to me, or else there'll be a row.' Well, she begged to go, but I would not hear a word of it; so she gave in. "So we went on for more than a year; I was middlin' steady, and she kept the home up well, only I noticed she seemed less happy-like; and if I stopped her going to church or chapel on Sunday, I couldn't get her to go out for pleasure with me; for she said, 'Fair's fair; I keep away from one place to please you, I keep away from others to please myself.' And I thought there was something in that; don't you?" The men made a murmur, half yes, half no, and seemed to grow more attentive; it was level with their understanding. He went on. "Soon after that Meg was born, and how glad Alice was, to be sure! why, that child, I believe she would have worked her fingers to the bone for it. Some folks talk as if our little ones were a curse to us; why, mates, them as says so are worse than a jackdaw, and as empty as a bag of wind; they ain't got no heart themselves." "No; they're all jaw," said Sam. "Well, anyway, we didn't call Meg a curse by a long stretch; she crowed and grew, and every year bound us more together; for whatever little differences we had in other things we were one on the babe--she was the best in the world. But while Meg grew strong the mother grew weak, until she was as thin as a shadow; then I asked the doctor, who said she wanted change of air. I asked her if she would like to go and see her mother, and take Meg; lor', how pleased she was! So she went, and I saw her off. "How I got on without her I don't know; badly enough it was. When she came back little Meg was four years old. Mates, I didn't know the wife, so white and ill she was; but the child was brighter than ever, the sunshine of our lives. To make the story short, while I hoped and hoped Alice would mend, she didn't; and the sight of her face, so ghost-like, kind of haunted me--she was queer and lonely-like and--well, lads, I took to drink!"