It's a real picnic,
this is."
He handed her one, but she could not eat more than half of it, for
alcohol destroys the healthier appetites, and she soon went back to
the brandy bottle.
"Now, marm, that you are a little more comfortable, perhaps you will
tell me how as you got into this way, and you with a rich husband, as
I well knows, to love and cherish you."
"A husband to love and cherish me?" she said; "why, I have written to
him three times to tell him that I'm starving, and never a cent has he
given me--and there's no allowance due yet, and when there is they'll
take it, for I owe hundreds."
"Well," said George, "I call it cruel--cruel, and he rolling in gold.
Thirty thousand pounds he hev just made, that I knows on. You must be
an angel, marm, to stand it, an angel without wings. If it were my
husband, now I'd know the reason why."
"Ay, but I daren't. He'd murder me. He said he would."
George laughed gently. "Lord! Lord!" he said, "to see how men play it
off upon poor weak women, working on their narves and that like. He
kill you! Laryer Quest kill you, and he the biggest coward in
Boisingham; but there it is. This is a world of wrong, as the parson
says, and the poor shorn lambs must jamb their tails down and turn
their backs to the wind, and so must you, marm.
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