“I have walked, I suppose, fourteen miles in this cursed weather—haven’t had anything to eat. I’d turn out my pockets and prove to you I have not a stiver, but my hands are too cold, and my clothes cling to me with wet.”
“O William! how have you come to this?”
“Ill-health—breakdown—overmuch brain-work. And the world is dishonest; cursed cheats men are. It is no place for a man of genius and integrity.”
“But what will you do?”
He coughed again, and sank back, looking deadly in his exhaustion.
“It is a shame, my troubling you with questions. Kate, Kate, get hot water, and bread and meat, and a tumbler, and I will unlock my cellaret.”
Then, as the little maid bustled about fulfilling commands: “O William! I am so sorry, and why, why did you walk so far?”
“Because I wasn’t going to the workhouse. No, thank you, I am a gentleman. I thought you would give me food and a shake-down.”
“O William, how good of you to think of me. Oh, this is kind, and like a brother-in-law. Of course you could not go to the Union. I would have died of shame to think that you had, and of self-reproach to think you had not come on to me. But you forgive all that is past. That is dear of you, William.”
She took him in; of course she did.