“Matter, miss? What’s allus the matter with me? It’s my chronics. Not a wink of sleep have I had all the blessed night.”
“Well, I must give you something.”
“Nay, nay, my dear; you don’t understand my troubles. It’s the absorption is all wrong; and you’d be giving me something out of the wrong bottles. You just give me a taste of sperrits to give me strength to get home again, and beg and pray o’ the doctor to come on and see me as soon as he comes home, if you don’t want me to be laid out stark and cold afore another day’s done.”
“But I have no spirits, Mrs Bray.”
“Got none? Well, I dessay a glass o’ wine might do. Keep me alive p’raps till I’d crawled home to die.”
“But we have no wine.”
“Dear, dear, dear, think o’ that,” said the woman fretfully. “The old doctor always had some, and a drop o’ sperrits, too. Ah, it’s a hard thing to be old and poor and in bad health, carrying your grey hairs in sorrow to the grave; and all about you rich and well and happy, rolling in money, and marrying and giving in marriage and wearing their wedding garments, one and all. You’ve heard about the doings up at the Manor House?”
“Yes, yes, something about them, Mrs Bray; but I’ll tell my brother, and he will, I know, come and see you.”
“Yes, you tell him; not as I believe in him much, but poor people must take what they can get—He’s come back, you know?”
“My brother? No; he would have come straight in here.”