Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/118

110 child, “Naughty lad, naughty lad! Tha’ shanna hae it, no, not if ter bites thj mother like that.”

The family interest was now divided between us and the private concerns in process when we entered;—save, however, that the bacon sucker had sucked on stolidly, immovable, all the time.

“Our Sam, wheer’s my knittin’, tha’s ’ad it?” cried S’r Ann after a little search.

“&thinsp;’A ’e na,” replied Sam from under the table.

“Yes, tha’ ’as,” said the mother, giving a blind prod under the table with her foot.

“&thinsp;’A ’e na then!” persisted Sam.

The mother suggested various possible places of discovery, and at last the knitting was found at the back of the table drawer, among forks and old wooden skewers.

“I ’an ter tell yer wheer ivrythink is,” said the mother in mild reproach. S’r Ann, however, gave no heed to her parent. Her heart was torn for her knitting, the fruit of her labours; it was a red woollen cuff for the winter; a corkscrew was bored through the web, and the ball of red wool was bristling with skewers.

“It’s a’ thee, our Sam,” she wailed. “I know it’s a’ thee an’ thy A. B. C.”

Samuel, under the table, croaked out in a voice of fierce monotony:

The mother began to shake with quiet laughter.

“His father learnt him that—made it all up,” she whispered proudly to us—and to him.