erself partly with her pipe and
partly with frequent applications to the jug. After a while Thomas rose
from the couch, and took his seat by the fire opposite to her. There
was a long pause; at last he broke it by saying,--

"Alice."

"Well, Thomas."

"Alice, you know I have been up at Ned's. Ned's a quiet, civil man, and
a gradely Christian too. I wish our house had been like his; we
shouldn't have lost our Sammul then."

"Well, my word! what's come over you, Thomas? Why, sure you're not a-
going to be talked over by yon Brierley folk!" exclaimed his wife.
"Why, they're so proud, they can't look down upon their own shoes: and
as for Brierley's wenches, if a fellow offers to speak to 'em, they'll
snap his head off. And Martha herself's so fine that the likes of me's
afraid to walk on the same side of the road for fear of treading on her
shadow."

"Well, Alice, I've oft abused 'em all myself; but I were wrong all the
time. And you're wrong, Alice, too. They've never done us no harm, and
we've nothing gradely to say against 'em; and you know it too. They've
toiled hard for their brass, and they haven't made it away as _we_ have
done; and if they're well off, it's no more nor they deserve."

"Not made away their brass! No, indeed!" said his wife, contemptuously,
"no danger of that; they'll fist it close enough. They like it too well
to part with it. They'll never spend a ha'penny to give a poor chap a
drop of beer, though he's dying of thirst."

"No, 'cos they've seen what a curse the drink has been to scores and
hundreds on us. Ah, Alice, if you had but seen the happy faces gathered
round Ned's hearth-stone; if you had but heard Ned's hearty welcome--
though he can't but know that I've ever been the first to give him and
his a bad word--you couldn't say as you're saying now."

"Come, Thomas," said his wife, "don't be a fool. If Ned Brierley likes
his teetottal ways, and brings up his lads and wenches same fashion, let
him please himself; but he mustn't make teetottallers of you nor me."

"And why shouldn't he make a teetottaller of me?" cried Thomas, his
anger rising at his wife's opposition. "What has the drink done for us,
I'd like to know? What's it done with my wage, with our Betty's wage,
with our poor Sammul's wage? Why, it's just swallowed all up, and paid
us back in dirt and rags. Where's there such a beggarly house as this
in all the village? Why haven't we clothes to our backs and sh