"Drain the bottle and see, Maria."
"You are a one, you are!" the emancipated servant said. "I ha' seen a sight o' bad 'uns, but never one like you. And if I was th' master, I'd up and chuck you inter th' street, see if I wouldn't, and git a little peace in 'is 'ome with a diff'runt woman than you! 'E wouldn't have to go far, neither, before 'e found one to 'is mind, master wouldn't, an' so I tell you! An' as for me, I'm done with you, so there!"
The woman looked after her as she bounced to the door, hiccoughing, holding the now empty glass in her shaking hand. Her brows were knit; she seemed in her muddled brain to be considering something.
"The girl Grantley promised she'd come to-day," she said. "She promised she'd bring me something."
"And did so, right enough. But you 'aven't got no memory nor nothin'!"
"Where is it, then, Maria dear? For my poor head's splitting——"
"Why, in th' basket as stan' agin your sofy, where you put it yourself, for I see ye do it."
Left to herself, the woman put the glass to her lips, sucked from it the few drops that hung upon its sides, lay with it in her hand, alternately looking into it and looking into space, lifting it to her lips again and again.
The machinery of her mind was too far destroyed for it to work in any suggested groove. It strayed off the line continually into all sorts of hazy, dim byways.
A disgrace!