They get accustomed there from their childhood to hear words whose very meanings they shouldn't know; and the older teach the younger ones, and the married ones are worst of all.

It wears them out in body, sir, that field-work, and makes them brutes in soul and in manners.' 'Why don't they give it up?
Why don't the respectable ones set their faces against it ?' 'They can't afford it, sir.

They must go a-field, or go hungered, most of them.

And they get to like the gossip and scandal, and coarse fun of it, while their children are left at home to play in the roads, or fall into the fire, as plenty do every year.' 'Why not at school ?' 'The big ones are kept at home, sir, to play at nursing those little ones who are too young to go.

Oh, sir,' he added, in a tone of deep feeling, 'it is very little of a father's care, or a mother's love, that a labourer's child knows in these days!' Lancelot looked round the booth with a hopeless feeling.