"Yes," said a shrill female voice from a window, "but your British lion wucking man wants his dinner, don't he?" There was a roar of laughter at this. "Yah!" said Sim, contemptuously. "Why do I wuck mysen to death for you all, to be badgered for it?" "I don't know," said the same voice from the window, sounding more shrill than ever, "but I know this, Sim Slee, that my bairns is all pining, while their father's doing nowt but walk about wi' his hands in his pockets, and if things don't soon change, some o' them as got up this strike 'll be put oonder the poomp, and if the men don't do it uz women will." Sim folded his arms, looked round contemptuously as there rose another shout of laughter, and stalked off to walk to the station and meet the deputation, as he called the man he had invited to come down. Volume 2, Chapter XIX. THE FOREMAN'S APOLOGY. There was, indeed, a calm, but to the vicar it seemed a very deceitful one, and he spent many an uneasy hour in thinking whether it was likely when the men grew excited they would attack the house; but he always came back to the conclusion that Richard would be safe there, so long as he did nothing more to exasperate his workmen. During visits to the house, Mrs Glaire, with tears, avowed that she could do nothing, only hope, for Richard was stubbornness itself, and when for a moment he thought of inducing Eve to play the part of intercessor, the poor girl's wan and piteous look pained him so that he could not ask her, and it was brought thoroughly home to him that she must love Richard very dearly, though now they were cruelly estranged; and as he sat and gazed upon her, and grew more and more intimate, learning the sweet truth of her nature, and thorough self-denial, he felt half maddened to think she should be thrown away upon such a man, and told himself that he would gladly have seen her wedded to any one to escape so terrible a union. The past and Daisy Banks were quite ignored. She was a trouble that had come upon the mother and cousin's life, but she was removed apparently from their path, unless some of the letters Richard so regularly wrote were for her. Murray felt his position in connection with the family acutely. The rumour spread by Budd as to his being forbidden the house was false, but scarcely a day passed when Richard came down, after indulging himself a week in bed to cure ills from which he really did not suffer, but for which stout Mr Purley doctored him stolidly, and made his sister enter them in the day-book when he got home--scarcely a day passed without the vicar having to submit to some insult.