"Ah? but you can't," replied the home comfort, as she quietly removed everything portable from within the reach of the sufferer's arm, and settling herself in rigid implacability, prepared to do battle with the evil one.
"Since you won't use your bodily senses for your soul's advantage," said she, solemnly, "I will, myself, peruse these pages of admonition."
Now, there cannot be a doubt but that the work Mrs. Bulworthy prepared to read, was an excellent one, written by an excellent person, and distributed for a most excellent purpose; but, to say the least, it was very injudicious in the absorbingly-pious lady to exhibit so much concern for the immortal part of poor Bulworthy, altogether overlooking the mortal anguish he was at the present moment enduring.
At all events, he thought so, for, what with the pain and the rage, he commenced a series of bellowings, in the expectation that his other tormentor would be recalled to the necessity of directing her mind from the future, to the suffering before her; but, no, not a bit of it; the louder he roared, the shriller she read, being a contest, as she imagined, between the fierce obstinacy of the demon within him, and the efficacy of her ministration; on she went, inflexibly, in the prolonged cadence of the conventicle, never ceasing or averting her strong eye from the tract, until she had finished its perusal. Not a word of it did he, would he hear, for, with yelling occasionally, and stopping his ears at intervals, the blessed communication might have been written in its original Sanscrit, for all the good it did him.
However, she had done her duty, and was satisfied. "Temper, temper, Pether," she ejaculated, as he heaved a groan of impatience from one of the twinges. "Suffer patiently; it is good for the flesh to be mortified; think of the worse that is to come."
"Oh! you're a comforter if ever there was one," sighed the Squire. "How the mischief can I be patient with a coal of fire on every toe of me? It's mighty aisy for thim that doesn't feel it to keep gabblin' about patience. I'll roar if I like; it does me good to swear at the murdherin' thing, and I will, too."
Whereupon, he let fly a volley of epithets, not the very choicest in the vernacular, which had at least one good effect, for it sent the domestic missionary flying out of the room, tracts and all, utterly horrified at the outburst of impiety; he firing a parting shot or two after her, loaded with purely personal charges of not over complimentary character.
It was just at this moment that his opposite neighbor, the poor cobbler, having arrived at the most comforting part of his reflections, was indulging in one of his jolliest songs, the merry sound of which penetrated to the apartment of the suffering rich man, filling his heart with envy.
"Listen to that," he grunted, swaying backward and forward from the intensity of the pain. "What's the use av all my money; there's that blaggard cobbler, without a rap to bless himself with, and the song's never out of his vagabone throat; oh, murdher! if I wouldn't give every shillin' that I'm worth in the world to change conditions with the chirpin' schemer."
In a short time, however, the composing drafts, spirituous and otherwise, began to do their work; a drowsy sensation crept over him, and he dropped into an unquiet slumber.