Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

"Why, where should you have gone? You daren't even get your
parcel through the yard-end," she said.
He looked such a fool she was not even angry with him.
He continued to take his boots off and prepare for bed.
"I don't know what's in your blue handkerchief," she said.
"But if you leave it the children shall fetch it in the morning."
Whereupon he got up and went out of the house, returning presently
and crossing the kitchen with averted face, hurrying upstairs.
As Mrs. Morel saw him slink quickly through the inner doorway,
holding his bundle, she laughed to herself: but her heart was bitter,
because she had loved him.
CHAPTER III
THE CASTING OFF OF MOREL--THE TAKING ON OF WILLIAM
DURING the next week Morel's temper was almost unbearable.
Like all miners, he was a great lover of medicines, which,
strangely enough, he would often pay for himself.
"You mun get me a drop o' laxy vitral," he said. "It's a
winder as we canna ha'e a sup i' th' 'ouse."
So Mrs. Morel bought him elixir of vitriol, his favourite
first medicine. And he made himself a jug of wormwood tea. He had
hanging in the attic great bunches of dried herbs:
wormwood, rue, horehound, elder flowers, parsley-purt,
marshmallow, hyssop, dandelion, and centaury. Usually there was a jug of
one or other decoction standing on the hob, from which he drank largely.
"Grand!" he said, smacking his lips after wormwood. "Grand!"
And he exhorted the children to try.
"It's better than any of your tea or your cocoa stews," he vowed.
But they were not to be tempted.
This time, however, neither pills nor vitriol nor all his herbs
would shift the "nasty peens in his head". He was sickening for an
attack of an inflammation of the brain. He had never been well since
his sleeping on the ground when he went with Jerry to Nottingham.
Since then he had drunk and stormed. Now he fell seriously ill,
and Mrs. Morel had him to nurse. He was one of the worst
patients imaginable. But, in spite of all, and putting aside the
fact that he was breadwinner, she never quite wanted him to die.
Still there was one part of her wanted him for herself.