`Look, dad!' he said.
`That's right, my beauty,' replied Morel, who was peculiarly lavish of endearments to his second son. Paul popped the fuse into the powder-tin, ready for the morning, when Morel would take it to the pit, and use it to fire a shot that would blast the coal down.
Meantime Arthur, still fond of his father, would lean on the arm of Morel's chair, and say:
`Tell us about down pit, daddy.'
This Morel loved to do.
`Well, there's one little 'oss--we call 'im Taffy,' he would begin. `An' he's a fawce un!'
Morel had a warm way of telling a story. He made one feel Taffy's cunning.
`He's a brown un,' he would answer, `an' not very high. Well, he comes i' th' stall wi' a rattle, an' then yo' 'ear 'im sneeze.
`"Ello, Taff," you say, "what art sneezin' for? Bin ta'ein' some snuff?"
`An' 'e sneezes again. Then he slives up an' shoves 'is 'ead on yer, that cadin'.
`"What's want, Taff?" yo' say.'
`And what does he?' Arthur always asked.
`He wants a bit o' bacca, my duckey.'
This story of Taffy would go on interminably, and everybody loved it.
Or sometimes it was a new tale.
`An' what dost think, my darlin'? When I went to put my coat on at snap-time, what should go runnin' up my arm but a mouse.
`"Hey up, theer!" I shouts.
`An' I wor just in time ter get 'im by th' tail.'
`And did you kill it?'
`I did, for they're a nuisance. The place is fair snied wi' 'em.'
`An' what do they live on?'
`The corn as the 'osses drops--an' they'll get in your pocket an' eat your snap, if you'll let 'em--no matter where yo' hing your coat--the slivin', nibblin' little nuisances, for they are.'
These happy evenings could not take place unless Morel had some job to do. And then he always went to bed very early, often before the children. There was nothing remaining for him to stay up for, when he had finished tinkering, and had skimmed the headlines of the newspaper.
And the children felt secure when their father was in bed. They lay and talked softly awhile. Then they started as the lights went suddenly sprawling over the ceiling from the lamps that swung in the hands of the colliers tramping by outside, going to take the nine o'clock shift. They listened to the voices of the men, imagined them dipping down into the dark valley. Sometimes they went to the window and