Page:Between Two Loves.djvu/105

100 So that, if Sarah had her trials and cares during the miserable summer and autumn inaugurated by that unhappy christening, Jonathan's riches did not shield him from very similar ones. Often during their hot, dusty days he stood watching his frames with a heavy heart, and thinking—"full purse or empty purse, the weft o' life comes through a sorrowful shuttle."

It was in the early part of June when Steve borrowed the first sovereign from Sarah. It had been a little hard for him to make that application, but he felt less at the next one, and it soon became a very common thing for his sister to find him waiting in her room, especially on Saturday afternoon, when she received her wages. For Steve did not succeed in finding work, though he disappeared continually under the pretence of looking for it. He would be absent for three or four days, perhaps a week, if the weather were fine, and then return hungry and penniless, but just as cheerful as if he had been earning his living.

And Joyce, sitting anxious and suffering in her denuded cottage, was angered by his good-tempered indifference, and she made him feel her anger, in all those unequivocal ways at the