short, as have offended so, but that I know Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham
Abbey, ain't one o' them that likes to hear their good deeds pumlished.
And a pension to me now, it's something more than it were. For a pension
and pretty rosy cheeks in a maid, which I was--that's a bait many a
man'll bite, that won't so a forsaken wife!"

"If you will speak to the point, ma'am, I will listen to you," the
baronet interrupted her.

"It's the beginnin' that's the worst, and that's over, thank the Lord!
So I'll speak, Sir Austin, and say my say:--Lord speed me! Believin' our
idees o' matrimony to be sim'lar, then, I'll say, once married--married
for life! Yes! I don't even like widows. For I can't stop at the
grave. Not at the tomb I can't stop. My husband's my husband, and if
I'm a body at the Resurrection, I say, speaking humbly, my Berry is the
husband o' my body; and to think of two claimin' of me then--it makes me
hot all over. Such is my notion of that state 'tween man and woman. No
givin' in marriage, o' course I know; and if so I'm single."

The baronet suppressed a smile. "Really, my good woman, you wander very
much."

"Beggin' pardon, Sir Austin; but I has my point before me all the same,
and I'm comin' to it. Ac-knowledgin' our error, it'd done, and bein'
done, it's writ aloft. Oh! if you ony knew what a sweet young creature
she be! Indeed; 'taint all of humble birth that's unworthy, Sir Austin.
And she got her idees, too: She reads History! She talk that sensible as
would surprise ye. But for all that she's a prey to the artful o' men--
unpertected. And it's a young marriage--but there's no fear for her, as
far as she go. The fear's t'other way. There's that in a man--at the