Timothy Crumps Ward | Page 3

said Mrs. Crump, mildly.
"There's a hundred ways. Poor folks like us ought not to expect to have meat so often. It's frightful to think what the butcher's bill must have been the last six months."
Inconsistent Rachel! Only the day before she had made herself very uncomfortable because there was no meat for dinner, and said she couldn't live without it. Mrs. Crump might have reminded her of this, but the good woman was too kind to make the retort. She contented herself with saying that they must try to do better in future.
"That's always the way," muttered Rachel. "Shut the stable door when the horse is stolen. Folks never learn from experience till it's too late to be of any use. I don't see what the world was made for, for my part. Everything goes topsy-turvy, and all sorts of ways except the right way. I sometimes think 'taint much use livin'."
"Oh, you'll feel better by and by, Rachel. Hark, there's Jack, isn't it?"
"Anybody might know by the noise who it is," pursued Rachel, in the same general tone that had marked her conversation hitherto. "He always comes stomping along as if he was paid for makin' a noise. Anybody ought to have a cast-iron head that lives anywhere in his hearing."
Her cheerful remarks were here broken in upon by the sudden entrance of Jack, who, in his eagerness, slammed the door behind him, unheeding his mother's quiet admonition not to make a noise.
"Look there!" said he, displaying a quarter of a dollar.
"How did you get it?" asked his mother.
"Holding horses," answered Jack.
"Here, take it, mother. I warrant you'll find a use for it."
"It comes in good time," said Mrs. Crump. "We're out of flour, and I had no money to buy any. Before you take off your boots, Jack, why can't you run over to the store, and get half a dozen pounds?"
"You see the Lord hasn't quite forgotten us," remarked his mother, as Jack started on his errand.
"What's a quarter of a dollar?" said Rachel, gloomily. "Will it carry us through the winter?"
"It will carry us through to-night, and perhaps Timothy will have work to-morrow. Hark, that's his step."

CHAPTER II.
THE EVENTS OF AN EVENING.

AT this moment the outer door opened, and Timothy Crump entered, not with the quick elastic step of one who brings good tidings, but slowly and deliberately, with a quiet gravity of demeanor, in which his wife could read only too well that he had failed in his efforts to procure work.
His wife, reading all these things in his manner, had the delicacy to forbear intruding upon him questions to which she saw that he could give no satisfactory answers.
Not so Aunt Rachel.
"I needn't ask," she began, "whether you got work, Timothy. I knew beforehand you wouldn't. There ain't no use in tryin'. The times is awful dull, and, mark my words, they'll be wuss before they're better. We mayn't live to see 'em. I don't expect we shall. Folks can't live without money, and when that's gone we shall have to starve."
"Not so bad as that, Rachel," said the cooper, trying to look cheerful; "don't talk about starving till the time comes. Anyhow," glancing at the table on which was spread a good plain meal, "we needn't talk about starving till to-morrow, with that before us. Where's Jack?"
"Gone after some flour," replied his wife.
"On credit?" asked the cooper.
"No, he's got the money to pay for a few pounds," said Mrs. Crump, smiling, with an air of mystery.
"Where did it come from?" asked Timothy, who was puzzled, as his wife anticipated. "I didn't know you had any money in the house."
"No more we had, but he earned it himself, holding horses, this afternoon."
"Come, that's good," said the cooper, cheerfully, "We ain't so bad off as we might be, you see, Rachel."
The latter shook her head with the air of a martyr.
At this moment Jack returned, and the family sat down to supper.
"You haven't told us," said Mrs. Crump, seeing her husband's cheerfulness in a measure restored, "what Mr. Blodgett said about the chances for employment."
"Not much that was encouraging," answered Timothy. "He isn't at all sure how soon it will be best to commence work; perhaps not before spring."
"Didn't I tell you so?" commented Rachel, with sepulchral sadness.
Even Mr. Crump could not help looking sober.
"I suppose, Timothy, you haven't formed any plans," she said.
"No, I haven't had time. I must try to get something else to do."
"What, for instance?"
"Anything by which I can earn a little, I don't care if it's only sawing wood. We shall have to get along as economically as we can; cut our coat according to our cloth."
"Oh, you'll be able to earn something, and we can live very plain," said Mrs. Crump, affecting a cheerfulness greater than she felt.
"Pity you