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As the mourners returned, chilled by the winter's blast, sleek Moses Fletcher crossed their path, an old woman flinging at him the words: 'Thaa's had th' uttermost farthin', but thaa's God to square wi' yet. Moses Fletcher was suffering from what the doctor called 'nervous shock, with sundry wounds of a severe nature received in an attempt to rescue his dog in a canine mêlée.
'Oh, don't talk ter me! proceeded Mrs. Kemp. 'When I was a girl I give all my money ter my mother. She never 'ad ter ask me for nothin'. On Saturday when I come 'ome with my wiges, I give it 'er every farthin'. That's wot a daughter ought ter do. I can say this for myself, I be'aved by my mother like a gal should. None of your prodigal sons for me!
"Aw'm a poor cotton weighver, as ony one knows; We'n no meight i'th heawse, an' we'n worn eawt er clothes; We'n live't upo nettles, while nettles were good; An' Wayterloo porritch is th' most of er food; This clemmin' and starvin', Wi' never a farthin' It's enough to drive ony mon mad." This family was four in number man, wife, and two children.
'I was down at his house, bedad, the "Brass Castle," if you plase, and not a brass farthin' for my pains, nothing there but an ould woman, as ould and as ugly as himself, or the divil be gannies! An' he's levanted, or else tuck for debt. Brass Castle! brass forehead, bedad.
Dividin nineteen pound, seven and six, by that, it makes me come to thrippence happenny a pound, 'cording to the laws o' Massachusetts, countin bones and waste. Mutton ain't wuth but tuppence, and there's lots o' fellers here for sech small debts, that they don't come to mor'n a farthin a pound, and ye see I'm gittin dearer, Perez.
It was really scanderlous, though to be sure Mister 'iggs paid up everythin' to the last farthin' and it fairly brought tears to my eyes to see his dear empty boots lyin' there in the corner of his room, which alone showed trouble of mind for he always stood 'em up straight as solgers, though bein' half-soled twice they hadn't, of course, been worth takin' away."
Besides, you don't see parties as goes in for the other thing walkin' round with ribs on 'em like bed-slats, and not even the price of a cup of corfy in their pockets, do you? No fear! I wouldn't've 'urt the young lydie; but I tell you strite, I'd a took every blessed farthin' she 'ad on her if you 'adn't've dropped on me like this."
There's every farthin' I stole from your poor mother. I kep' it intendin' to go to Lun'on, and have a good long spree so it's all there. You'll give it to her, but don't tell her who stole it. That's a matter 'tween you an' me an' the Almighty. Just you say that the miserable sinner who took it has bin saved by Jesus Christ, an' now returns it and axes her pardon."
Nicholas was a long, thin lad, with melancholy grey eyes and a square forehead, whose capacity his grandfather had held in some esteem, since it had been discovered, years ago, that "the spalpeen could make out an account for four sets of shoes, and half a stone of three-inch holdfasts, and a dozen of staples, and two gallon of the crathur, and allow for a hundredweight of ould iron, all in his head, and right to a farthin'." Now the melancholy eyes darkened and brightened with excitement as Mr.
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