Page:An Old English Home and Its Dependencies.djvu/193

Rh "Bless y', sir, I never first thought on it at all; I never thought other from the time I began to think but that it must be—it wor ordained so." "Have you children?" "Yes; they be all out in the world and doing well. We haven't to blush for any of them—men and maids all alike—respectable." "Then you ought to be very happy." "I reckon us ought, and us should be but for that new mill." "It is spoiling your custom?"

"It is killin' of us old folks out. It isn't so much that us gets no grinding I mind, but it leaves me and my Anne with no means in our old age, and us don't like to go on to the childer, and us don't like to go into the work'us. There it is. Us did reckon on being able honestly to get our bread for ourselves and ax nobody for nothing. But now this ere new mill wi' the steam ingens and the electric light—someone must pay for all that, and who is that but the customers? I've no electric light here, water costs nothing. Coals costs twenty-one shillings a ton, and it