"It's no use talking to me, Janey. I can't live this life any longer; and if the man that's brought me to it won't help me, I've made up my mind what to do. Nothing can change it--nothing. Look at me; I've hardly a rag to my back. It's a rosy look-out, to-morrow is. If I had decent clothes and a pound in my pocket, I might get into service; but who'd take me as I am?"
"You are changed from what you were, Martha; you used to be as merry as a lark."
"The lark's taken out of me long ago, and you haven't much of it left in you that I can see. I don't know that you're any better off than me, though you _are_ a respectable married woman; you've had to pay for your respectability. Much comfort it brings you, according to your own reckoning! What water is that dripping outside?"
She asked this question in the dark; the candle had gone out, and Mrs. Flower had no more.
"The water-butt leaks."
"Drip, drip, drip--and then it becomes a large pool--I see it spreading out--large enough to drown one's self in!"
"Martha!"
"Which would be best, Janey? That or what I shall be forced into if no one helps me? Supposing I'm alive! There it goes--drip, drip, drip! It might be drops of blood. There isn't a sheet of water I've seen since my child died that hasn't seemed to draw me to it, that hasn't whispered, 'Come, and end it!' When you wake up of a morning sometimes, aren't you sorry?"
"I am, God help me!"
"You've had a long sleep, and you've been happy; and you wake up--to this! Wouldn't it be better never to wake up? Drip, drip, drip! It's singing 'Come, come, come!' It drips just to that tune." She began to sing softly, with a pause between each word, to keep time to the water, "Come--come--come! Let me alone, Janey; don't lay hands on me. I'm all right for a day or two--I won't say for how much longer. I'll try and get some sleep."