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This, with an occasional resort to the Horse and Cart, was the philosophy that had comforted him not only for the loss of his son but for the loss of his wife. Ten shillings a week was a fixed sum, but there was another sum, the number of his family, which was not so straitly fixed. Up till his wife's death it had been liable to increase, and he sometimes felt a real comfort in the thought that this danger was now past. He had loved his Ruth, she had been part of himself and his life, but he could not forget that if she had lived there would have been two more to feed, and no doubt by this time the prospect of a third. Now that figure which weekly divided the figure of his wages was reduced still lower. Another penny all round for flour and suet . . . or seven pennies to go jingling in his pocket to the Horse and Cart. . . .

Susan accepted her father's occasional bouts of drunkenness. They did not happen at times which would have imperilled his job or scandalized the Brethren. Once or twice a month, when his field work was done, he would walk in to Copthorne instead of going home, and spend a few pence on beer, which went to his head because it was bad beer and his stomach was empty. He had always recovered enough to go to work the next morning, and the money spent was fully repaid by the fact that after an orgy he would eat no food for twenty-four hours. He was never violent or obscene; and now that she had grown accustomed to his strangeness, the whole thing was from her point of view quite unexceptionable.