"Well, my dear, I thought—I did not want"—stammered forth the clerk, nervously.
"You do want it; it does you good; you have not taken the pledge."
"No, but"—there was a look of perplexity on John Sands's sallow face; he did not know how to finish his sentence.
"The truth is, you can't trust me even to see it," observed Nancy, gloomily.
"I thought that I should not like to be different from you, my dear," said Sands, in a deprecatory tone. He would have made any other sacrifice of his own comfort, as he made this, for the sake of rescuing his wife from her fearful vice.
"Different,—you can't help being different," murmured Nancy, "you who never in all your born days took one drop too much. It's hard for you to be kept from your beer. But perhaps you're right, John," she added, looking her husband full in the face; "at least just at the first. I suspect that if I saw any strong drink it would not end with the seeing; I'd give the world at this moment for a draught of good double stout."
Nancy rose on the following morning much the better for a calm night's rest, and the breakfast was decidedly more cheerful than the supper had been. The clerk had afterwards to attend a christening, but his wife was not long left alone, for a succession of visitors came to see her, some from curiosity, some from kindness.
One of the first to appear was Stone's wife, the former motive being that which moved her, though she deceived herself into thinking that she was performing a charitable deed by going to see "that wretched creature Nancy, who must be ashamed to show her face."
"I hope that this will be a warning to you, Mrs. Sands, a solemn warning," said Mrs. Stone, after the first greetings and inquiries had been exchanged. "You've lost an arm, but you might have lost your life; if you'd been taken then"—Bell paused, for there was something in Nancy's face which told her that the temper of the old tigress might be lurking in her still, and that it might be dangerous to rouse it. It was hardly to be expected that Mrs. Sands would endure that any officious bungler should, as it were, tear off the bandage and probe the yet unhealed wound in her spirit. Had John Sands plied his wife with reproaches and admonitions after the fashion of Bell Stone, it is probable that Nancy would have returned to his dwelling, not as a penitent, but as a savage-hardened offender.
The entrance of Mrs. Fuddles put a stop to what might have ended in what she would have called a "flare up." Mrs. Stone suddenly recollected that she could not stop long away from her poor dear patient, and hurried away, shrugging her shoulders and saying to herself, as she left the place, that it was clear, from the company kept by Nancy, that in spite of all that had happened, she'd be as bad as ever again.