shrill but unmeaning scold: "There now, you gallows-bird! you has taken
the swipes without chalking; you wants to cheat the poor widow; but I
sees you, I does! Providence protects the aged and the innocent--Oh, oh!
these twinges will be the death o' me. Where's Martha? You jade, you!
you wiperous hussy, bring the tape; does n't you see how I suffers? Has
you no bowels, to let a poor Christian cretur perish for want o' help!
That's with 'em, that's the way! No one cares for I now,--no one has
respect for the gray 'airs of the old!" And then the voice dwindled into
the whimpering "tenor of its way."

Martha, a strapping wench with red hair streaming over her "hills of
snow," was not, however, inattentive to the wants of her mistress. "Who
knows," said she to a man who sat by the hearth, drinking tea out of a
blue mug, and toasting with great care two or three huge rounds of bread
for his own private and especial nutriment,--"who knows," said she, "what
we may come to ourselves?" And, so saying, she placed a glowing tumbler
by her mistress's elbow.

But in the sunken prostration of her intellect, the old woman was
insensible even to her consolation. She sipped and drank, it is true;
but as if the stream warmed not the benumbed region through which it
passed, she continued muttering in a crazed and groaning key,--

"Is this your gratitude, you sarpent! Why does not you bring the tape, I
tells you? Am I of a age to drink water like a 'oss, you nasty thing!
Oh, to think as ever I should live to be desarted!"

Inattentive to these murmurs, which she felt unreasonable, the bouncing
Martha now quitted the room to repair to her "upper household"
avocations. The man at the hearth was the only companion left to the