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"I swore I wouldn't," she said to herself as she went along; "but I'm dinged if the sight o' Depper's old woman a-crawlin' arter them mamucked up bits o' dough ha'n't tarned my stomach!" She knocked at the door with the toe of her boot, her hands being full, and receiving no answer, opened it and went in.
Depper's cottage, indeed, was the first in the row of which Dinah's was the last a half-dozen two-roomed tenements, living-room below, bedroom above, standing with their backs to the road, from which they were divided by no garden, nor even so much as a narrow path.
"When I ha' baked Depper's fourses cake, and sent it off by 'Meelyer's little gal she ha' lent her to me to go back and forth to the harvest-field, 'Meelyer have I kin go," the wife said; "not afore," hiccoughing loudly over the tea she tried to drink; "not afore not afore! Oh, how I wish I could, bor; how I wish I could!" "You're a-goin', this instant minute," the masterful Dinah declared.
The cottage of Dinah Brome, distant from that of Depper's wife by a score or so of yards, was, in its domestic economy, as removed from it as the North Pole from the South.
Depper's old woman had fallen, a miserable heap of bones and dingy clothing, upon the broken-down couch, and had fainted there. "I'd suner 'twas anyone in the warld than you a-waitin' on me like this," she said, when, consciousness having returned during the ministrations of the other woman, her weary eyes opened upon the healthy face above her.
Daily more of a skeleton, hourly feebler and feebler, grew Depper's old woman; clinging, for all that, desperately to life and the hope of recovery for the sake of Depper himself. "Let go the things of this life, lay hold on those of Eternity," the clergyman said, solemnly reproving her for her worldly state of mind.
"They tell me as how Depper's wife ain't a-goin' to get over this here sickness she've got," she said, tucking in the edges of the whitey-brown paper upon the half-pound of moist sugar taken from the scales. "The doctor, he ha'n't put a name to her illness, but 'tis one as'll carry her off, he say." "A quarter pound o' butter," Dinah unmovedly said. "The best, please.
All I'll ask of ye now, Dinah Brome, is that ye'll have an eye to Depper's fourses cake in th' oven, and see that 'Meelyer's gal take it and his home-brew, comf'table, to th' field for 'm." Dinah, having folded the woman's clothes, spread them for additional warmth upon the poor bed-covering.
Whether this plan met with Depper's approval or not, Dinah Brome did not wait to see. "For Car'line's peace o' mind, arter wha's come and gone, 'tis th' only way," she said to herself and to him; and by it he had to abide. It was not for many weeks.
The other had not the strength to resist. "I'm wholly done," she murmured, helplessly, "wholly done at last." "My! How ha' you got up these here stairs alone?" Dinah, having half-dragged, half-carried the feeble creature to the top, demanded of her, wiping her own brow. "Crawled, all-fours." Depper's wife panted out the explanation.
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