"He was a very rough man was Em'ly's husband," said Mrs. Jervis, in her delicate thoughtful voice—"a very uncultivated man."
Marcella turned round to her, startled and amused by the adjective. But the other two listeners took it quite quietly. It seemed to them apparently to express what had to be said.
"It's a sad thing is want of edication," Mrs. Jervis went on in the same tone. "Now there's that lady there"—with a little courtly wave of her hand towards Mrs. Burton—"she can't read yer know, Nurse, and I'm that sorry for her! But I've been reading to her, an' Emily—just while my cough's quiet—one of my ole tracks."
She held up a little paper-covered tract worn with use. It was called "A Pennorth of Grace, or a Pound of Works?" Marcella looked at it in respectful silence as she put on her cloak. Such things were not in her line.
"I do love a track!" said Mrs. Jervis, pensively. "That's why I don't like these buildings so well as them others, Em'ly. Here you never get no tracks; and there, what with one person and another, there was a new one most weeks. But"—her voice dropped, and she looked timidly first at her friend, and then at Marcella—"she isn't a Christian, Nurse. Isn't it sad?"
Mrs. Burton, a woman of a rich mahogany complexion, with a black "front," and a mouth which turned down decisively at the corners, looked up from her embroidery with severe composure.
"No, Nurse, I'm not a Christian," she said in the tone of one stating a disagreeable fact for which they are noways responsible. "My brother is—and my sisters—real good Christian people. One of my sisters married a gentleman up in Wales. She 'as two servants, an' fam'ly prayers reg'lar. But I've never felt no 'call,' and I tell 'em I can't purtend. An' Mrs. Jervis here, she don't seem to make me see it no different."
She held her head erect, however, as though the unusually high sense of probity involved, was, after all, some consolation. Mrs. Jervis looked at her with pathetic eyes. But Emily coloured hotly. Emily was a churchwoman.
"Of course you're a Christian, Mrs. Burton," she said indignantly. "What she means, Nurse, is she isn't a 'member' of any chapel, like mother. But she's been baptised and confirmed, for I asked her. And of course she's a Christian."
"Em'ly!" said Mrs. Jervis, with energy.