der, afore, as I can call
ter mind. I don't rightly onderstan' what you ha' got agin me--come
ter put it into wards."

"I ha' got this agin ye," the valiant Dinah said: "that you ha'
nouraged yer own inside and let your missus's go empty. You ha' got too
much drink aboard ye, now, an' her fit ter die for the want of a drop
o' sperrits. And I ha' got this ter say: that we ha' come to a pass
when I ha' got to make ch'ice twixt you and yer old woman. Arter wha's
come and gone, we t'ree can't hob an' nob, as ye may say, together. My
ch'ice is made, then, and this is how I ha' fixed it up. When yer day's
wark is done, and you come home, I go out o' your house. Sune as yer up
an' away i' th' mornin', I come in and ridd up yer missus and wait on
'er, while the woman's in need of me."

Whether this plan met with Depper's approval or not, Dinah Brome did
not wait to see. "For Car'line's peace o' mind, arter wha's come and
gone, 'tis th' only way," she said to herself and to him; and by it he
had to abide.

It was not for many weeks. The poor unlovely wife, lying in the
dismantled four-poster in the only bedroom, was too far gone to benefit
by the 'nouragement' Mrs Brome contrived to administer. The
sixpenn'orths of brandy Depper, too late relenting, spared from the sum
he had hitherto expended on his own beer--public-house brandy,
poisonous stuff, but accredited by the labouring population of Dulditch
with all but magical restorative powers--for once failed in its effect.
Daily more of a skeleton, hourly feebler and feebler, grew Depper's old
woman; clinging, for all that, desperately to life and the hope of
recovery for the sake of Depper himself.

"Let go the things of this life, lay hold on those of Eternity," the
clergyman said, solemnly reproving her for her worldly state of mind.
"Remember that there is no one in this world whose life is
indispensable to the scheme of it. Try to think more humbly of
yourself, my poor friend, less regretfully of the world you are
hurrying from. Fix your eyes on the heavenly prospect. Try to join with
me more heartily in the prayers for the dying."

She listened to them, making no response, with slow tears falling from
shut lids to the pillow. "'Tain't for myself I'm a-pinin', 'tis for
Depper," she said, the parson being gone.

"All the same, Car'line," Mrs Brome said, sharply admonishing, "I'd
marmar a ward now and agin for myself, as the reverend ha' been
advisin' of ye, if I was y