'Of whom?'
'My dead husband.'
'Bosh!' exclaimed Hawkey, who thought this was (what, to do her justice, it was not) 'twaddle.'
They were together in his sanctum, or 'den,' which passed occasionally as his office; though the table, like the mantelpiece, was strewed with pipes, their ashes were everywhere, and the air was generally redolent of somewhat coarse tobacco smoke.
Having a favour to ask, he had, in his own fashion, been screwing his courage to the sticking-point.
'You have been imbibing—drinking again?' said his pale sister, eyeing him contemptuously with her cold, glittering stare.
'"I take a little wine for my stomach's sake and other infirmities," as we find in 1st Timothy,' said he with a twinkle in his shifty eyes.
'The devil can quote Scripture, so well may you.'
'That is severe, Deb,' said he, filling his pipe.
'Come to the point.'