He looked at her, and his sunken eyes flashed with quite an eager light.
"That's true!" he said—"He'd wish he were poor with some one to love him! Mary, you've been so kind to me—promise me one thing!"
"What's that?" and she patted his hand soothingly.
"Just this—if I die on your hands don't let that man Arbroath bury me! I think my very bones would split at the sound of his rasping voice!"
Mary laughed.
"Don't you worry about that!" she said—"Mr. Arbroath won't have the chance to bury you, David! Besides, he never takes the burials of the very poor folk even in his own parishes. He wrote a letter in one of the countryside papers not very long ago, to complain of the smallness of the burial fees, and said it wasn't worth his while to bury paupers!" And she laughed again. "Poor, bitter-hearted man! He must be very wretched in himself to be so cantankerous to others."
"Well, don't let him bury me!" said Helmsley—"That's all I ask. I'd much rather Twitt dug a hole in the seashore and put my body into it himself, without any prayers at all, than have a prayer croaked over me by that clerical raven! Remember that!"
"I'll remember!" And Mary's face beamed with kindly tolerance and good-humour—"But you're really quite an angry old boy to-day, David! I never saw you in such a temper!"
Her playful tone brought a smile to his face at last.
"It was that horrible suggestion of money compensation for a child's life that angered me,"—he said, half apologetically—"The notion that pounds, shillings and pence could pay for the loss of love, got on my nerves. Why, love is the only good thing in the world!"