“I never saw him after his wife came to me,” she answered, “but Mrs. Turk would get news of him now and then. Since Mrs. Turk’s death, I have heard nothing. Sometimes I think he may be dead.”
“I hope he was hung!” flashed the Squire.
Well—to hasten on. That was Dorothy Grape’s history since she left Worcester; and a cruel one it was!
We saw her once or twice again before quitting London. And the Squire left a substantial present with her, for old remembrance sake.
“She looks as though she needed it, Johnny,” said he. “Poor thing! poor thing! And such a pretty, happy little maiden as she used to be, standing in her pinafore amongst the yellow roses in the porch at Islip! Johnny, lad, I hope that vagabond came to be hanged!”
II.
It was ever so long afterwards, and the time had gone on by years, when we again fell into the thread of Dorothy Grape’s life. The Squire was in London for a few days upon some law business, and had brought me with him.
“I should like to see how that poor woman’s getting on, Johnny,” he said to me one morning. “Suppose we go down to Gibraltar Terrace?”
It was a dull, damp, misty day at the close of autumn; and when the Squire turned in at No. 60, after dismissing the cab, he stood still and stared, instead of knocking. A plate was on the door, “James Noak, carpenter and joiner.”
“Has she left, do you think, Johnny?”