"Matty, tell Mary Ann Tyrrett as she promised faithful to bring me something off her score this week, but I've not seen the colour of it yet."
"She says as it's to put to his head," called back Matty, alluding to the present demand. "He's bad a-bed, and have fainted right off."
"Serve him right," responded Mrs. Buffle. "You may give her the vinegar, Matty. Tell her as it's a penny farthing. I heered he had been drinking again," she added to herself and the washing tub, "and laid hisself down in the wet road the night afore last, and was found there in the morning."
Later in the day, it happened that William Halliburton was passing through Honey Fair, and met Charlotte East. She stopped him. "Have you heard, sir, that Tyrrett is dying?" she asked.
"Tyrrett dying!" repeated William in amazement. "Who says he is?"
"The doctor says it, I believe, sir. I must say he looks like it. Mary Ann sent for me, and I have been down to see him."
"Why, what can be the matter with him?" asked William. "He was at work the day before yesterday!"
"He was at work, sir, but he could not speak, they tell me, for that illness that has been hanging about him so long, and had settled on his chest. That night, after leaving work, instead of going home and getting a basin of gruel, or something of that sort, he went to the Horned Ram, and drank there till he couldn't keep upright."
"With his chest in that state!"
"And that was not the worst," resumed Charlotte. "It had been a wet day, if you remember, sir, and he somehow strayed into Oxlip Lane, and fell down, and lay there till morning. What with drink, and what with exposure to the wet, his chest grew dangerously inflamed, and now the doctor says he has not many hours to live."