She had rather a complaining manner. The clergyman sat on uncomfortably while she laid the table for the half-past ten lunch. Her husband drew up to eat. She remained in her little round armchair by the fire. She was a woman who would have liked to be easy in her life, but to whose lot had fallen a rough and turbulent family, and a slothful husband who did not care what became of himself or anybody. So, her rather good-looking square face was peevish, she had that air of having been compelled all her life to serve unwillingly, and to control where she did not want to control. There was about her, too, that masterful _aplomb_ of a woman who has brought up and ruled her sons: but even them she had ruled unwillingly. She had enjoyed managing her little haberdashery-shop, riding in the carrier’s cart to Nottingham, going through the big warehouses to buy her goods. But the fret of managing her sons she did not like. Only she loved her youngest boy, because he was her last, and she saw herself free. This was one of the houses the clergyman visited occasionally. Mrs Durant, as part of her regulation, had brought up all her sons in the Church. Not that she had any religion. Only, it was what she was used to. Mr Durant was without religion. He read the fervently evangelical _Life of John Wesley_ with a curious pleasure, getting from it a satisfaction as from the warmth of the fire, or a glass of brandy. But he cared no more about John Wesley, in fact, than about John Milton, of whom he had never heard. Mrs Durant took her chair to the table. “I don’t feel like eating,” she sighed. “Why—aren’t you well?” asked the clergyman, patronizing. “It isn’t that,” she sighed. She sat with shut, straight mouth. “I don’t know what’s going to become of us.” But the clergyman had ground himself down so long, that he could not easily sympathize. “Have you any trouble?” he asked. “Ay, have I any trouble!” cried the elderly woman. “I shall end my days in the workhouse.” The minister waited unmoved. What could she know of poverty, in her little house of plenty! “I hope not,” he said. “And the one lad as I wanted to keep by me——” she lamented. The minister listened without sympathy, quite neutral. “And the lad as would have been a support to my old age! What is going to become of us?” she said. The clergyman, justly, did not believe in the cry of poverty, but wondered what had become of the son. “Has anything happened to Alfred?” he asked. “We’ve got word he’s gone for a Queen’s sailor,” she said sharply. “He has joined the Navy!” exclaimed Mr Lindley. “I think he could scarcely have done better—to serve his Queen and country on the sea....” “He is wanted to serve _me_,” she cried. “And I wanted my lad at home.” Alfred was her baby, her last, whom she had allowed herself the luxury of spoiling. “You will miss him,” said Mr Lindley, “that is certain. But this is no regrettable step for him to have taken—on the contrary.”