'Do you?' said her mother. 'Why?'
'It's so red, and full of little caves?and it feels so nice, and you can fair smell it.'
'It'll want mending directly,' replied her mother, 'and then if your father comes he'll carry on and say there never is a fire when a man comes home sweating from the pit. A public-house is always warm enough.'
There was silence till the boy said complainingly: 'Make haste, our Annie.'
'Well, I am doing! I can't make the fire do it no faster, can I?'
'She keeps wafflin' it about so's to make 'er slow,' grumbled the boy.
'Don't have such an evil imagination, child,' replied the mother.
Soon the room was busy in the darkness with the crisp sound of crunching. The mother ate very little. She drank her tea determinedly, and sat thinking. When she rose her anger was evident in the stern unbending of her head. She looked at the pudding in the fender, and broke out:
'It is a scandalous thing as a man can't even come home to his dinner! If it's crozzled6 up to a cinder I don't see why I should care. Past his very door he goes to get to a public-house, and here I sit with his dinner waiting for him '
She went out. As she dropped piece after piece of coal on the red fire, the shadows fell on the walls, till the room was almost in total darkness. 'I canna see,' grumbled the invisible John. In spite of herself, the mother laughed.
'You know the way to your mouth,' she said. She set the dust pan outside
the door. When she came again like a shadow on the hearth, the lad repeated,
complaining sulkily:
'I canna see.'
'Good gracious!' cried the mother irritably, 'you're as bad as your father if
it's a bit dusk!'
Nevertheless, she took a paper spill from a sheaf on the mantelpiece and
proceeded to light the lamp that hung from the ceiling in the middle of the
3. Name of a pub. 5. Frame that keeps coals in the fireplace. 4. Taking out or cutting away coal or stone (a min-6. Curled. ing and quarrying term).
.
ODOUR OF CHRYSANTHEMUMS / 224 9
room. As she reached up, her figure displayed itself just rounding with maternity.
'Oh, mother !' exclaimed the girl.
'What?' said the woman, suspended in the act of putting the lamp-glass over the flame. The copper reflector shone handsomely on her, as she stood with uplifted arm, turning to face her daughter. 'You've got a flower in your apron!' said the child, in a little rapture at this unusual event.
'Goodness me!' exclaimed the woman, relieved. 'One would think the house was afire.' She replaced the glass and waited a moment before turning up the wick. A pale shadow was seen floating vaguely on the floor.
'Let me smell!' said the child, still rapturously, coming forward and putting her face to her mother's waist.
'Go along, silly!' said the mother, turning up the lamp. The light revealed their suspense so that the woman felt it almost unbearable. Annie was still bending at her waist. Irritably, the mother took the flowers out from her apron- band.
'Oh, mother?don't take them out!' Annie cried, catching her hand and trying to replace the sprig. 'Such nonsense!' said the mother, turning away. The child put the pale chrysanthemums to her lips, murmuring:
'Don't they smell beautiful!'
Her mother gave a short laugh.
'No,' she said, 'not to me. It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his buttonhole.' She looked at the children. Their eyes and their parted lips were wondering. The mother sat rocking in silence for some time. Then she looked at the clock.
'Twenty minutes to six!' In a tone of fine bitter carelessness she continued: 'Eh, he'll not come now till they bring him. There he'll stick! But he needn't come rolling in here in his pit-dirt, for I won't wash him. He can lie on the floor Eh, what a fool I've been, what a fool! And this is what I came here for, to this dirty hole, rats and all, for him to slink past his very door. Twice last week?he's begun now '
She silenced herself and rose to clear the table.
While for an hour or more the children played, subduedly intent, fertile of
imagination, united in fear of the mother's wrath, and in dread of their father's
home-coming, Mrs Bates sat in her rocking chair making a 'singlet' of thick
cream-coloured flannel, which gave a dull wounded sound as she tore off the
grey edge. She worked at her sewing with energy, listening to the children,
and her anger wearied itself, lay down to rest, opening its eyes from time to
