I have never known why
the law stood in my mother's way, or why it was at last that Rucker gave
up all hope and vented his spite on my mother and on me. I do not blame
him for feeling put out, for property is property after all, but to
abuse me and my mother shows what a bad man he was. Sometimes he used to
call me a damned little beggar. The first time he did that my mother
looked at him with a kind of lost look as if all the happiness in life
were gone. After that, even when a letter came from the lawyers who were
looking after the case, holding out hope, and always asking for money,
and Rucker for a day or so was quite chipper and affectionate to my
mother in a sickening sort of sneaking way, her spirits never rose so
far as I could see. I suppose she was what might be called a
broken-hearted woman.
This went on until I was thirteen years old. I was little and not very
strong, and had a cough, caused, perhaps, by the hard steady work, and
the lint in the air of the factory. There were a good many cases every
year of the working people there going into declines and dying of
consumption; so my mother had taken me out of the factory every time
Rucker went away, and tried to make me play. It was so in all the
factories in those days, I guess. I did not feel like playing, and had
no playmates; but I used to go down by the canal and watch the boats go
back and forth. Sometimes the captains of the boats would ask me if I
didn't want a job driving; but I scarcely knew what they meant.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25