The failure to find another lodging, and the lack of room in this
house for his father, had made a deep impression on the boy--a
brooding undemonstrative horror seemed to have seized him. The
silence was broken by his saying: "Mother, WHAT shall we do
to-morrow!"
"I don't know!" said Sue despondently. "I am afraid this will
trouble your father."
"I wish Father was quite well, and there had been room for him!
Then it wouldn't matter so much! Poor Father!"
"It wouldn't!"
"Can I do anything?"
"No! All is trouble, adversity, and suffering!"
"Father went away to give us children room, didn't he?"
"Partly."
"It would be better to be out o' the world than in it, wouldn't it?"
"It would almost, dear."
"'Tis because of us children, too, isn't it, that you can't get a
good lodging?"
"Well--people do object to children sometimes."
"Then if children make so much trouble, why do people have 'em?"
"Oh--because it is a law of nature."
"But we don't ask to be born?"
"No indeed."
"And what makes it worse with me is that you are not my real mother,
and you needn't have had me unless you liked. I oughtn't to have
come to 'ee--that's the real truth! I troubled 'em in Australia,
and I trouble folk here. I wish I hadn't been born!"
"You couldn't help it, my dear."
"I think that whenever children be born that are not wanted they
should be killed directly, before their souls come to 'em, and not
allowed to grow big and walk about!"
Sue did not reply. She was doubtfully pondering how to treat this
too reflective child.
She at last concluded that, so far as circumstances permitted, she
would be honest and candid with one who entered into her difficulties
like an aged friend.
"There is going to be another in our family soon," she hesitatingly
remarked.
"How?"
"There is going to be another baby."
"What!" The boy jumped up wildly. "Oh God, Mother, you've never
a-sent for another; and such trouble with what you've got!"
"Yes, I have, I am sorry to say!" murmured Sue, her eyes glistening
with suspended tears.
The boy burst out weeping. "Oh you don't care, you don't care!" he
cried in bitter reproach. "How EVER could you, Mother, be so wicked
and cruel as this, when you needn't have done it till we was better
off, and Father well! To bring us all into MORE trouble! No room
for us, and Father a-forced to go away, and we turned out to-morrow;
and yet you be going to have another of us soon! ... 'Tis done o'
purpose!--'tis--'tis!" He walked up and down sobbing.