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Mrs Durant took her chair to the table.

“I don’t feel like eating,” she sighed.

“Why—aren’t you well?” asked the clergyman, patronizing.

“It isn’t that,” she sighed. She sat with shut, straight mouth. “I don’t know what’s going to become of us. ”

But the clergyman had ground himself down so long, that he could not easily sympathize.

“Have you any trouble?” he asked.

“Ay, have I any trouble!” cried the elderly woman. “I shall end my days in the workhouse. ”

The minister waited unmoved. What could she know of poverty, in her little house of plenty!

“I hope not,” he said.

“And the one lad as I wanted to keep by me—” she lamented.

The minister listened without sympathy, quite neutral.

“And the lad as would have been a support to my old age! What is going to become of us?” she said.

The clergyman, justly, did not believe in the cry of poverty, but wondered what had become of the son.

“Has anything happened to Alfred?” he asked.

“We’ve got word he’s gone for a Queen’s sailor,” she said sharply.

“He has joined the Navy!” exclaimed Mr Lindley. “I think he could scarcely have done better—to serve his Queen and country on the sea … ”

“He is wanted to serve me,” she cried. “And I wanted my lad at home. ”

Alfred was her baby, her last, whom she had allowed herself the luxury of spoiling.

“You will miss him,” said Mr Lindley, “that is certain. But this is no regrettable step for him to have taken—on the contrary. ”

“That’s easy for you to say, Mr Lindley,” she replied tartly. “Do you think I want my lad climbing ropes at another man’s bidding, like a monkey—?”

“There is no dishonour, surely, in serving in the Navy?”

“Dishonour this dishonour that,” cried the angry old woman. “He goes and makes a slave of himself, and he’ll rue it. ”

Her angry, scornful impatience nettled the clergyman and silenced him for some moments.

“I do not see,” he retorted at last, white at the gills and inadequate, “that the Queen’s service is any more to be called slavery than working in a mine. ”

“At home he was at home, and his own master. Iknow he’ll find a difference. ”

“It may be the making of him,” said the clergyman. “It will take him away from bad companionship and drink. ”

Some of the Durants’ sons were notorious drinkers, and Alfred was not quite steady.

“And why indeed shouldn’t he have his glass?” cried the mother. “He picks no man’s pocket to pay for it!”

The clergyman stiffened at what he thought was an allusion to his own profession, and his unpaid bills.

“With all due consideration, I am glad to hear he has joined the Navy,” he said.

“Me with my old age coming on, and his father working very little! I’d thank you to be glad about something else besides that, Mr Lindley. ”

The woman began to cry. Her husband, quite impassive, finished his lunch of meat-pie, and drank some beer. Then he turned to the fire, as if there were no one in the room but himself.

“I shall respect all men who serve God and their country on the sea, Mrs Durant,” said the clergyman stubbornly.

“That is very well, when they’re not your sons who are doing the dirty work. —It makes a difference,” she replied tartly.

“I should be proud if one of my sons were to enter the Navy. ”

“Ay—well—we’re not all of us made alike—”

The minister rose. He put down a large folded paper.

“I’ve brought the almanac,” he said.

Mrs Durant unfolded it.

“I do like a bit of colour in things,” she said, petulantly.

The clergyman did not reply.

“There’s that envelope for the organist’s fund—” said the old woman, and rising, she took the thing from the mantelpiece, went into the shop, and returned sealing it up.