But no need to tire you with
telling all. She married again, ma'am, a man young enough to be her
son--a nice man he was to look at too--a gentleman's servant he had
been. Then they set up in a public-house. Then the whiskey, ma'am, that
they bees all so fond of--he took to drinking it in the morning even,
ma'am--and that was bad, to my thinking."
"Ay, indeed!" said Molly, with a groan of sympathy; "oh the whiskey! if
men could keep from it!"
"And if women could!" said Mr. Crofton in a low voice.
The Englishwoman looked up at him, and then looked down, refraining from
assent to his smile.
"My mother-in-law," continued she, "was very koind to me all along, as
far as she could. But one thing she could not do; that was, to pay me
back the money of husband's and mine that I lent her. I thought this odd
of her--and hard. But then I did not know the ways of the country in
regard to never paying debts."
"Sure it's not the ways of all Ireland, my dear," said Molly; "and it's
only them that has not that can't pay--how can they?"
"I don't know--it's not for me to say," said the Englishwoman,
reservedly; "I am a stranger. But I thought if they could not pay me,
they need not have kept a jaunting-car."
"Is it a jaunting-car?" cried Molly. She pushed from her the chair on
which she was leaning--"Jaunting-car bodies! and not to pay you!--I give
them up intirely.
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