Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/147

 were in the nearest churchyard. My father was as black as the coal he worked in: I know I'm just his pattern, barring that he did have his legs, when the liquor hadn't got into them. But between him and my mother, for grand, high intelligence there wasn't much to choose. But what's the use of brains if you haven't got a backbone? My poor father had even less of that than I, for with me it's only the body that can't stand up, and with him it was the spirit. He discovered a kind of wheel, and he sold it, at Bradford, for fifteen pounds: I mean the whole right of it, and every hope and pride of his family. He was always straying, and my mother was always bringing him back. She had plenty to do, with me a puny, ailing brat from the moment I opened my eyes. Well, one night he strayed so far that he never came back; or only came back a loose, bloody bundle of clothes. He had fallen into a gravel-pit; he didn't know where he was going. That's the reason my brother will never touch so much as you could wet your finger with, and that I only have a drop once a week or so, in the way of a strengthener. I take what her ladyship brings me, but I take no more. If she could have come to us before my mother went, that would have been a saving! I was only nine when my father died, and I'm three years older than Paul. My mother did for us with all her might, and she kept us decent—if such a useless little mess as me can be said to be decent. At any rate, she kept me alive, and that's a proof she was handy. She went to the wash-tub, and she might have been a queen, as she stood there with her bare arms in the foul linen and her long hair braided on her head. She was terrible handsome, but he would have been a bold man that would