The women on the hillside look across as they shake the hearthrug against the fence, and count the wagons the engine is taking along the line up the valley.

And the children, as they come from school at dinner-time, looking down the fields and seeing the wheels on the headstocks standing, say: "Minton's knocked off.

My dad'll be at home." And there is a sort of shadow over all, women and children and men, because money will be short at the end of the week.
Morel was supposed to give his wife thirty shillings a week, to provide everything--rent, food, clothes, clubs, insurance, doctors.
Occasionally, if he were flush, he gave her thirty-five.

But these occasions by no means balanced those when he gave her twenty-five.

In winter, with a decent stall, the miner might earn fifty or fifty-five shillings a week.