Three generations

ii2 BREAD-WINNER AND HOUSE-MOTHER
be gifts of fortune in the pits, there might also be
sources of ruin. The old tranquil, easy days of a
comparatively settled, if modest, income were at an
end. It would be advisable, nay, it was incumbent,
to brace up every power she possessed, and lend her
help in making provision for the accidents and reverses
which might lurk in the future. She was aware of my
father's ignorance and incompetence as a practical
farmer, and, as far as she could, she caused the farm
to pay on the side which she could take up. As a fact,
for many years, while my father paid the rent and the
servants' wages, my mother, by her exertions in con-
nection with the dairy, fed and clad the household.
As it happened, in the end every resource was taxed,
and my mother's contribution to the maintenance of
the family was a conspicuous factor in its record.
The farm which my father had been forced to rent
along with the coal-seam, while he knew nothing of
farming and had no liking for it, would have been
at the most a white elephant on his hands, useless if
not a serious loss, but here my mother could come
to the front. Her bringing-up at Balass ceased to be
a dead-letter, and, what was best of all, the responsi-
bilities she assumed were a labour of love, since she
had kept a warm heart for the associations of her
happy youth before the blight of sickness and poverty
fell upon it.
Fortunately, while she could not walk a quarter
of a mile without difficulty, she was as active and
indefatigable as ever within doors and in the im-
mediate precincts. Her course was taken, and she
returned to the habits in which she had been reared,
and laid aside all her later town ways — her nine o'clock
breakfasts, her close engagements with the smart and