‘Help you!  How?  I would do anything,—­but what can I do?’

’Miss there’—­for Margaret had re-entered the room, and stood silent, listening—­’has often talked grand o’ the South, and the ways down there.  Now I dunnot know how far off it is, but I’ve been thinking if I could get ’em down theer, where food is cheap and wages good, and all the folk, rich and poor, master and man, friendly like; yo’ could, may be, help me to work.  I’m not forty-five, and I’ve a deal o’ strength in me, measter.’

‘But what kind of work could you do, my man?’

‘Well, I reckon I could spade a bit——­’

‘And for that,’ said Margaret, stepping forwards, ’for anything you could do, Higgins, with the best will in the world, you would, may be, get nine shillings a week; may be ten, at the outside.  Food is much the same as here, except that you might have a little garden——­’

‘The childer could work at that,’ said he.  ‘I’m sick o’ Milton anyways, and Milton is sick o’ me.’

‘You must not go to the South,’ said Margaret, ’for all that.  You could not stand it.  You would have to be out all weathers.  It would kill you with rheumatism.  The mere bodily work at your time of life would break you down.  The fare is far different to what you have been accustomed to.’

‘I’se nought particular about my meat,’ said he, as if offended.

’But you’ve reckoned on having butcher’s meat once a day, if you’re in work; pay for that out of your ten shillings, and keep those poor children if you can.  I owe it to you—­since it’s my way of talking that has set you off on this idea—­to put it all clear before you.  You would not bear the dulness of the life; you don’t know what it is; it would eat you away like rust.  Those that have lived there all their lives, are used to soaking in the stagnant waters.  They labour on, from day to day, in the great solitude of steaming fields—­never speaking or lifting up their poor, bent, downcast heads.  The hard spade-work robs their brain of life; the sameness of their toil deadens their imagination; they don’t care to meet to talk over thoughts and speculations, even of the weakest, wildest kind, after their work is done; they go home brutishly tired, poor creatures! caring for nothing but food and rest.  You could not stir them up into any companionship, which you get in a town as plentiful as the air you breathe, whether it be good or bad—­and that I don’t know; but I do know, that you of all men are not one to bear a life among such labourers.  What would be peace to them would be eternal fretting to you.  Think no more of it, Nicholas, I beg.  Besides, you could never pay to get mother and children all there—­that’s one good thing.’