“You read your Bible, Mildred,” said the lady, who with a knife and fork was securing on her plate the morsels to which old Mildred helped her.
“Ay, ma’am, a bit now, and a bit again, never too late to repent, ma’am.”
“Repentance and grace, you’ll do, Mrs. Tarnley. It’s a pleasure to hear you,” said the lady, with her mouth rather full; “and you never see my husband?”
“Now and again, now and again, once and away he looks in.”
“Never stays a week or a month at a time?”
“Week or a month!” echoed Mrs. Tarnley, looking quickly in the serene face of the lady, and then laughing off the suggestion scornfully. “You’re thinking of old times, ma’am.”
“Thinking, thinking, I don’t think I was thinking at all,” said the lady, answering Mildred’s laugh with one more careless; “old times when he had a wife here, eh? old times! How old are they? Eh—that’s eighteen years ago—you hardly knew me when I called here?”
“There was a change surely. I’d like to know who wouldn’t in eighteen years, there’s a change in me since then.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said the lady, quietly. “Did he ever tell you how we quarrelled?”
“Not he,” answered Mildred.