'Wal, I niver,' said Hannah, with a stare of astonishment. 'Yo're a quare lot--the two o' yer.' One thing more Reuben remembered with some vividness in connection with the children's arrival. When they were both at last asleep--Louie in an unused room at the back, on an old wooden bedstead, which stood solitary in a wilderness of bare boards; David in a sort of cupboard off the landing, which got most of its light and air from a wooden trellis-work, overlooking the staircase--Hannah said abruptly to her husband, as they two were going to bed, 'When ull Mr. Gurney pay that money?' 'Twice a year--so his clerk towd me--Christmas an Midsummer. Praps we shan't want to use it aw, Hannah; praps we might save soom on it for t' childer. Their keep, iv yo feed em on parritch, is nobbut a fleabite, an they'n got a good stock o' cloos, Sandy's nurse towd me.' He looked anxiously at Hannah. In his inmost heart there was a passionate wish to do his duty to Sandy's orphans, fighting with a dread of his wife, which was the fruit of long habit and constitutional weakness. Hannah faced round upon him. It was Reuben's misfortune that dignity was at all times impossible to him. Now, as he sat in his shirt-sleeves and stocking-feet, flushed with the exertion of pulling off his heavy boots, the light of the tallow candle falling on his weak eyes with their red rims, on his large open mouth with the conspicuous gap in its front teeth, and his stubby hair, he was more than usually grotesque. 'As slamp an wobbly as an owd corn-boggart,' so his neighbours described him when they wished to be disrespectful, and the simile fitted very closely with the dishevelled, disjointed appearance which was at all times characteristic of him, Sundays or weekdays. No one studying the pair, especially at such a moment as this--the _malaise_ of the husband--the wife towering above him, her grey hair hanging loose round her black brows and sallow face instinct with a rugged and indomitable energy--could have doubted in whose hands lay the government of Needham Farm. 'I'll thank yo not to talk nonsense, Reuben Grieve,' said his wife sharply. 'D'yo think they're _my_ flesh an blood, thoose childer? An who'll ha to do for 'em but me, I should loike to know? Who'll ha to put up wi their messin an their dirt but _me_? Twenty year ha yo an I been married, Reuben, an niver till this neet did I ha to goo down on my knees an sweep oop after scrubbin-day! Iv I'm to be moidered wi em, I'll be paid for 't. Soa I let yo know--it's little enough.'