"'T wasn' mae, Mr. Greatorex, an' 't was n' Assy. Look yo 'ere. I tall yo Assy's freetened o' yo."
"'Oo says she's freetened?"
"I saays it. She's thot freetened thot she'd wash yore sweet'eart's dirty cleathes sooner 'n marry yo."
"She doesn't wash them?"
"Shea does. T' kape yore baaby, Jim Greatorex."
With that she left him.
* * * * *
For the next three months Greatorex was more than ever uneasy in his soul. The Sunday after Maggie's outburst he had sat all morning and afternoon in his parlor with his father's Bible. He had not even tried to see Alice Cartaret.
For three months, off and on, in the intervals of seeing Alice, he longed, with an intense and painful longing, for his God. He longed for him just because he felt that he was utterly separated from him by his sin. He wanted the thing he couldn't have and wasn't fit to have. He wanted it, just as he wanted Alice Cartaret.
And by his sin he did not mean his getting drunk. Greatorex did not think of God as likely to take his getting drunk very seriously, any more than he had seemed to take Maggie and Essy seriously. For Greatorex measured God's reprobation by his own repentance.