Hark, that's his step." At this moment the outer door opened, and Timothy Harding entered, not with the quick, elastic step of one who brings good tidings, but slowly and deliberately, with a quiet gravity of demeanor in which his wife could read only too well that he had failed in his efforts to procure work.
Reading all this in his manner, she had the delicacy to forbear intruding upon him questions to which she saw it would only give him pain to reply.
Not so Aunt Rachel.
"I needn't ask," she began, "whether you've got work, Timothy.

I knew beforehand you wouldn't.

There ain't no use in tryin'! The times is awful dull, and mark my words, they'll be wuss before they're better.

We mayn't live to see 'em.

I don't expect we shall.