it up straight,” he said to Millicent, as he arranged the tree in the box. She stood silent and held the top bough, he filled in round the roots.
When it was done, and pressed in, he went for the wheelbarrow. The girls were hovering excited round the tree. He dropped the barrow and stooped to the box. The girls watched him hold back his face—the boughs pricked him.
“Is it very heavy?” asked Millicent.
“Ay!” he replied, with a little grunt. Then the procession set off—the trundling wheel-barrow, the swinging hissing tree, the two excited little girls. They arrived at the door. Down went the legs of the wheel-barrow on the yard. The man looked at the box.
“Where are you going to have it?” he called.
“Put it in the back kitchen,” cried his wife.
“You'd better have it where it's going to stop. I don't want to hawk it about.”
“Put it on the floor against the dresser, Father. Put it there,” urged Millicent.
“You come and put some paper down, then,” called the mother hastily.
The two children ran indoors, the man stood contemplative in the cold, shrugging his uncovered shoulders slightly. The open inner door showed a bright linoleum on the floor, and the end of a brown side-board on which stood an aspidistra.
Again with a wrench Aaron Sisson lifted the box. The tree pricked and stung. His wife watched him as he entered staggering, with his face averted.
“Mind where you make a lot of dirt,” she said.
He lowered the box with a little jerk on to the spread-out newspaper on the floor. Soil scattered.
“Sweep it up,” he said to Millicent.
His ear was lingering over the sudden, clutching hiss of the tree-boughs.
A stark white incandescent light filled the room and made everything sharp and hard. In the open fire-place a hot fire burned red. All was scrupulously clean and perfect. A baby was cooing in a rocker-less wicker cradle by the hearth. The mother, a slim, neat woman with dark hair, was sewing a child's frock. She put this aside, rose, and began to take her husband's dinner from the oven.
“You stopped confabbing long enough tonight,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered, going to the back kitchen to wash his hands.
In a few minutes he came and sat down to his dinner. The doors were shut close, but there was a draught, because the settling of the mines under the house made the doors not fit. Aaron moved his chair, to get out of the draught. But he still sat in his shirt and trousers.
He was a good-looking man, fair, and pleasant, about thirty-two years old. He did not talk much, but seemed to think about something. His wife resumed her sewing. She was acutely aware of her husband, but he seemed not very much aware of her.
“What were they on about today, then?” she said.
“About the throw-in.”
“And did they settle anything?”
“They're going to try it—and they'll come out if it isn't satisfactory.”
“The butties won't have it, I know,” she said. He gave a short laugh, and went on with his meal.
The two children were squatted on the floor by the tree. They had a wooden box, from which they had taken many little newspaper packets, which they were spreading out like wares.
“Don't open any. We won't open any of them till we've taken them all out—and then we'll undo one in our turns. Then we s'll both undo equal,” Millicent was saying.
“Yes, we'll take them ALL out first,” re-echoed Marjory.
“And what are they going to do about Job Arthur Freer? Do they want him?” A faint smile came on her husband's face.
“Nay, I don't know what they want.—Some of 'em want him—whether they're a majority, I don't know.”
She watched him closely.
“Majority! I'd give 'em majority. They want to get rid of you, and make a fool of you, and you want to break your heart over it. Strikes me you need something to break your heart over.”
He laughed silently.
“Nay,” he said. “I s'll never break my heart.”
“You'll go nearer to it over that, than over anything else: just because a lot of ignorant monkeys want a monkey of their own sort to do the Union work, and jabber to them, they want to get rid of you, and you eat your heart out about it. More fool you, that's all I say—more fool you. If you cared for your wife and children half what you care about your Union, you'd be a lot better pleased in the end. But you care about nothing but a lot of ignorant colliers, who don't know what they want except it's more money just for themselves. Self, self, self—that's all it is with them—and ignorance.”
“You'd rather have self without ignorance?” he said, smiling finely.
“I would, if I've got to have it. But what I should like to see is a man that has thought for others, and isn't all self and politics.”
Her color had risen, her hand trembled with anger as she sewed. A blank look had come over the man's face, as if he did not hear or heed any more. He drank his tea in a long draught, wiped his moustache with two fingers, and sat looking abstractedly at the children.
They had laid all the little packets on the floor, and Millicent was saying:
“Now I'll undo the first, and you can have the second. I'll take this—”
She unwrapped the bit of newspaper and disclosed a silvery ornament for a Christmas tree: a frail thing like a silver plum, with deep rosy indentations on each side.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Isn't it LOVELY!” Her fingers cautiously held the long bubble of silver and glowing rose, cleaving to it with a curious, irritating possession. The man's eyes moved away from her. The lesser child was fumbling with one of the little packets.
“Oh!”—a wail went up from Millicent. “You've taken one!—You didn't wait.” Then her voice changed to a motherly admonition, and she began to interfere. “This is the way to do it, look! Let me help you.”
But Marjory drew back with resentment.
“Don't, Millicent!—Don't!” came the childish cry. But Millicent's fingers itched.
At length Marjory had got out her treasure—a little silvery bell with a glass top hanging inside. The bell was made of frail glassy substance, light as air.
“Oh, the bell!” rang out Millicent's clanging voice. “The bell! It's my bell. My bell! It's mine! Don't break it, Marjory. Don't break it, will you?”
Marjory was shaking the bell against her ear. But it was dumb, it made no sound.
“You'll
