“Heaven save us, no, Mr. Joseph! And you so forgiving! Mercy me, and people say men make all the trouble!”
“It's half-and-half, Mrs. Cox, dear old soul,” muttered Mr. Joseph, leaning back on his cushions. “I suppose we were both to blame. I can't, for the life of me, fall to talking of it as a judgment, for before heaven, I had done nothing. Yet I forgot how lonely she was and how proud, and I forgot too, that Ellen—that Ellen—”
“Ay, Mr. Joseph. It was Ellen too. Poor Ellen, that passed away out of it all!”
“And she—Miss Dexter—is still here, still living by herself in the cottage by the oak! I remember so well, Mrs. Cox, the first time my brother and I ever saw that oak!”
“I daresay, Mr. Joseph, I daresay. Yes, she is still there, living in her cottage unloved and unheeded, Mr. Joseph. And may she ever continue so!”
“Oh! don't say that, dear old soul! Don't say that! Do you know, I should like to see her—I mean—meet her once again!”
Mrs. Cox was certain he was not in “his right head” as she said to herself.
“See her again! Meet her, talk to her! The woman who served ye like this! what can you be thinking of? Let me call your brother. There he is coming along the road, brown and bonny, with his wife on his arm, bless them both?”
“Did you say he was brown, Mrs. Cox? My brother brown! What a change! He looks so well then, dear old soul!”
“If you could but see him, Mr. Joseph, you would see how well.”