"Why are you not sorry, then? Life's a good thing in the main, you
will allow."

"Yes, when it's endurable at all. But to have a brute of a husband
coming home at any hour of the night or morning, drunk upon the
money she had earned by hard work, was enough to take more of the
shine out of things than church-going on Sundays could put in again,
regular as she was, poor woman! I'm as glad as her brute of a
husband, that she's out of his way at last."

"How do you know he's glad of it?"

"He's been drunk every night since she died."

"Then he's the worse for losing her?"

"He may well be. Crying like a hypocrite, too, over his own work!"

"A fool he must be. A hypocrite, perhaps not. A hypocrite is a
terrible name to give. Perhaps her death will do him good."

"He doesn't deserve to be done any good to. I would have made this
coffin for him with a world of pleasure."

"I never found that I deserved anything, not even a coffin. The only
claim that I could ever lay to anything was that I was very much in
want of it."

The old smile returned--as much as to say, "That's your little game