Carraclough shook her plump self and sniffed. Then she took her handkerchief from her apron pocket and blew her nose. Finally she looked at her son, still sitting, unmoving. She shook her head sadly and spoke. Again her voice was patient and kind.

“Joe, come here,” she said.

The boy rose and stood by his mother. She put her plump arm around him and spoke, her head turned to the fire.

“Look Joe, ye’re getting to be a big lad now, and ye can understand. Ye see—well, ye know things aren’t going so well for us these days. Ye know how it is. And we’ve got to have food on the table and we’ve got to pay our rent—and Lassie was worth a lot of money and—well, we couldn’t afford to keep her, that’s all. Now these are poor times and ye mustn’t—ye mustn’t upset thy father. He’s worrying enough as it is—and—well, that’s all. She’s gone.”

Young Joe Carraclough stood by his mother in the cottage. He did understand. Even a boy of twelve years in Greenall Bridge knew what “poor times” were.

For years, for as long as children could remember, their fathers had worked in the Clarabelle Pit beyond the village. They had gone on-shift, off-shift, carrying their snap boxes of food and their colliers’ lanterns; and they had worked at bringing up the rich coal. Then times had become “poor.” The pit went on “slack time,” and the men earned less. Sometimes the work had picked up, and the men had gone on full time.

Then everyone was glad. It did not mean luxurious living for them, for in the coal-mining villages people lived a hard life at best. But it was a life of courage and family unity, at least, and if the food that was set on the tables was plain, there was enough of it to go round.

Only a few months ago, the pit had closed down altogether. The big wheel at the top of the shaft spun no more. The men no longer flowed in a stream to the pit-yard at the shift changes. Instead, they signed on at the Labor Exchange. They stood on the corner by the Exchange, waiting for work. But no work came. It seemed that they were in what the newspapers called “the stricken areas”—sections of the country from which all industry had gone. Whole villages of people were out of work. There was no way of earning a living. The Government gave the people a “dole”—a weekly sum of money—so that they could stay alive.

Joe knew this. He had heard people talking in the village. He had seen the men at the Labor Exchange.