"And leave my sticks for him to drink up? Don't you think I'm such a
silly."

"Do--_do_ let's go, mother! It's worse and worse every day, and he'll
kill us if we don't."

"No fear. He'll knock us about a bit, but he don't want a rope round
_his_ neck, you be sure. And he ain't so bad neither, when he's not
in the drink. He's sorry he hit me now."

"Oh, mother, I can't bear it! I hate him--I hate him; and he _isn't_
my father, and he hates me, and he'll kill me some day when I come home
with nothing."

"Who says he isn't your father--where did you hear that, Fan?"

"He calls me bastard every day, and I know what that means. Mother, _is_
he my father?"

"The brute--no!"

"Then why did you marry him, mother? Oh, we could have been so happy
together!"

"Yes, Fan, I know that _now_, but I didn't know it then. I married
him three months before you was born, so that you'd be the child of
honest parents. He had a hundred pounds with me, but it all went in a
year; and it's always been up and down, up and down with us ever since,
but now it's nothing but down."