But Kit only laughs.

'It is Ma'am at her music,' she says; 'but it t'aint the sort of music I like.' Yes, indeed, sir, I have heered her say that a score of times." "Very well, then, you had better go and have a talk with your wife," returned Malcolm.
And Caleb went, and came back to Rotherwood the next day a sadder and a wiser man.
"Well, and what did Mrs.Martin say ?" asked Malcolm when he saw Caleb again.
The little cobbler drew his hand across his eyes in an embarrassed fashion; he was evidently trying to recollect something.
"Ma'am sends her humble duty," he answered presently in a sing-song voice, "and she is greatly obliged to you and the kind lady, and Kit may stay along of Mrs.Sullivan--those were her very words, sir." "Mrs.Martin is a sensible woman then." "Oh, she is that, sir.

She was scolding me all supper-time for not thinking of the child's good.

'You can bring her back if you like, Caleb,' she says, 'and poison her with the filthy fogs, and get her ready for her coffin, poor lamb.

And you call yourself a father, Caleb Martin?
Drat all such fathers, I say!' She made me clean ashamed of myself, did Ma'am;" and here the little man looked ready to cry.
"Well, Mr.Martin, I do think the child will be better here, and you can come down every three weeks or so to see her--you know we have arranged that--and now and then you can bring your wife too;" and Caleb brightened up at this.
But the day he left Rotherwood he was so lugubrious and tearful that Malcolm felt quite sorry for him; but Kit took a less depressing view.
"I don't want you to go, dad," she said feelingly; "but I like staying along with this good lady," with a friendly nod of her head to Mrs.
Sullivan.