fancy walking-stick.

At the wakes time Morel was working badly, and Mrs. Morel was trying
to save against her confinement. So it galled her bitterly to think
he should be out taking his pleasure and spending money, whilst she
remained at home, harassed. There were two days' holiday. On the Tuesday
morning Morel rose early. He was in good spirits. Quite early, before
six o'clock, she heard him whistling away to himself downstairs. He
had a pleasant way of whistling, lively and musical. He nearly always
whistled hymns. He had been a choir-boy with a beautiful voice, and had
taken solos in Southwell cathedral. His morning whistling alone betrayed
it.

His wife lay listening to him tinkering away in the garden, his
whistling ringing out as he sawed and hammered away. It always gave
her a sense of warmth and peace to hear him thus as she lay in bed, the
children not yet awake, in the bright early morning, happy in his man's
fashion.

At nine o'clock, while the children with bare legs and feet were sitting
playing on the sofa, and the mother was washing up, he came in from his
carpentry, his sleeves rolled up, his waistcoat hanging open. He was
still a good-looking man, with black, wavy hair, and a large black
moustache. His face was perhaps too much inflamed, and there was about
him a look almost of peevishness. But now he was jolly. He went straight
to the sink where his wife was washing up.

"What, are thee there!" he said boisterously. "Sluthe off an' let me
wesh mysen."