One evening after the boys were in bed, the father and mother sat talking. They had a pint of beer on the table between them, of which the woman tasted now and then that the man might imagine himself sharing it with her. Silence had lasted for some time. The mother was busy rough-patching a garment of Moxy's. The man's work for the day was over, but not the woman's! "Well, I dunnow!" he said at last, and there ceased. "What don ye know, John?" asked his wife, in a tone she would have tried to make cheerful had she but suspected it half as mournful as it was. "There's that Mr. Christopher as was such a friend!" he said: "--you don't disremember what he used to say about the Almighty and that? You remember as how he used to say a man could no more get out o' the sight o' them eyes o' hisn than a child could get out o' sight o' the eyes on his mother as was a watchin' of him!" "Yes, John, I do remember all that very well, and a great comfort it was to me at the time to hear him say so, an' has been many's the time since, when I had no other--leastways none but you an' the children. I often think over what he said to you an' me then when I was down, an' not able to hold my head up, nor feelin' as if I should ever lift it no more!" "Well, I dunnow!" said Franks, and paused again. But this time he resumed, "What troubles me is this:--if that there mother as was a lookin' arter her child, was to see him doin' no better 'n you an' me, an' day by day gettin' furder on the wrong way, I should say she wan't much of a mother to let us go on in that 'ere way as I speak on." "She might ha' got her reasons for it, John," returned his wife, in some fear lest the hope she cherished was going to give way in her husband. "P'r'aps she might see, you know, that the child might go a little farther and fare none the worse. When the children want their dinner very bad, I ha' heerd you say to them sometimes, 'Now kids, ha' patience. Patience is a fine thing. What if ye do be hungry, you ain't a dyin' o' hunger. You'll wear a bit longer yet!' Ain't I heerd you say that John--more'n once, or twice, or thrice?"