veils, and stopping out when honest women are in their beds:
you'll be a street-walker, Esther, and then, don't you go to think
I'll have you darken my door, though my wife is your sister?' So
says she, 'Don't trouble yourself, John, I'll pack up and be off
now, for I'll never stay to hear myself called as you call me.' She
flushed up like a turkey-cock, and I thought fire would come out of
her eyes; but when she saw Mary cry (for Mary can't abide words in a
house), she went and kissed her, and said she was not so bad as I
thought her. So we talked more friendly, for, as I said, I liked
the lass well enough, and her pretty looks, and her cheery ways.
But she said (and at that time I thought there was sense in what she
said) we should be much better friends if she went into lodgings,
and only came to see us now and then."

"Then you still were friendly. Folks said you'd cast her off, and
said you'd never speak to her again."

"Folks always make one a deal worse than one is," said John Barton
testily. "She came many a time to our house after she left off
living with us. Last Sunday se'nnight--no! it was this very last
Sunday, she came to drink a cup of tea with Mary; and that was the
last time we set eyes on her."

"Was she any ways different in her manner?" asked Wilson.

"Well, I don't know. I have thought several times since, that she
was a bit quieter, and more womanly-like; more gentle, and more
blushing, and not so riotous and noisy. She comes in towards four
o'clock, when afternoon church was loosing, and she goes and hangs
her bonnet up on the old nail we used to call hers, while she lived