"Peter Kermode, twenty-four pounds ten shillings," read Greeba, and a little old man, with a rough head and a grim, hard, ugly face, jostled through the people about him.
"Kermode," said Mrs. Fairbrother, "you always tried to cheat me, as you try to cheat everybody else, and when you sold me those seventy sheep for six shillings apiece last back end you thought they were all taking the rot, and you lost thirty pounds by them and brought yourself to beggary, and serve you right, too. But I sold them safe and sound for a pound apiece three days after; so here's half of the difference, and just try to be honest for the rest of your days. And it won't be a long task, either, for it's plain to see you're not far from death's door, and it isn't worth while to be a blood-sucker."
At that she paused for breath, and to press her lean hand over the place of the fire in her chest.
"Ye say true, ma'am, aw, true, true," said the man, in a lamentable voice. "And in the house of death it must be a great consolation to do right. Let's sing wi' ye, ma'am. I'm going in the straight way myself now, and plaze the Lord I'll backslide no more."
And while he counted out the money in his grimy palm, the old hypocrite was for striking up a Ranter hymn, beginning—
"Oh, this is the God we adore,
Our faithful, unchangeable friend."
But Mrs. Fairbrother cried on him to be silent, and then gathering strength she went on with the others until all were done. And passing to each his money, as the grasp of Death's own hand relaxed the hard grip of her tight fingers, she trembled visibly, held it out and drew it back again, and held it out again, as though she were reluctant to part with it even yet.
And when all was over she swept the people out of the room with a wave of her hand, and fell back to the bolster.
Then Greeba, thinking it a favorable moment to plead for her father, mentioned his name, and eyed her mother anxiously. Mrs. Fairbrother seemed not to hear at first, and, being pressed, she answered wrathfully, saying she had no pity for her husband, and that not a penny of her money should go to him.
But late the same day, after the doctor, who had been sent for from Douglas, had wagged his head and made a rueful face over her, she called for her sons, and they came and stood about her, and Greeba, who had nursed her from the beginning, was also by her side.