Leaning against the bare shelves which held their few pots and pans, she threw her apron over her head and burst into the forlornest weeping.

"I wish I was dead; I wish I was dead, an' the chillen too!" Marcella hung over her, one flame of passionate pity, comforting, soothing, promising help.

Mrs.Hurd presently recovered enough to tell her that Hurd had gone off that morning before it was light to a farm near Thame, where it had been told him he might possibly find a job.
"But he'll not find it, miss, he'll not find it," she said, twisting her hands in a sort of restless misery; "there's nothing good happens to such as us.

An' he wor allus a one to work if he could get it." There was a sound outside.

Mrs.Hurd flew to the door, and a short, deformed man, with a large head and red hair, stumbled in blindly, splashed with mud up to his waist, and evidently spent with long walking.
He stopped on the threshold, straining his eyes to see through the fire-lit gloom.
"It's Miss Boyce, Jim," said his wife.