"
"Don't talk o' that way," screamed her sister-in-law. "We've had
enow of ends and deaths without forecasting more." She covered her
face with her apron, and sat down to cry.
"He was such a good husband," said she, in a less excited tone, to
Mary, as she looked up with tear-streaming eyes from behind her
apron. "No one can tell what I've lost in him, for no one knew his
worth like me."
Mary's listening sympathy softened her, and she went on to unburden
her heavy-laden heart.
"Eh, dear, dear! No one knows what I've lost. When my poor boys
went, I thought the Almighty had crushed me to th' ground, but I
never thought o' losing George; I did na think I could ha' borne to
ha' lived without him. And yet I'm here, and he's"--A fresh burst
of crying interrupted her speech.
"Mary,"--beginning to speak again,--"did you ever hear what a poor
creature I were when he married me? And he such a handsome fellow!
Jem's nothing to what his father were at his age."
Yes! Mary had heard, and so she said. But the poor woman's thoughts
had gone back to those days, and her little recollections came out,
with many interruptions of sighs, and tears, and shakes of the head.
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