I live the
more I don't see as one man can bring another to beggary unless the
other man helps. The point is, Mr Rogers didn' leave him there. . . .
We've enough to eat."

"Ho! If _that_ contents you--" Mrs Bowldler shrugged her shoulders.

"Who said it did? We don't ezackly make Gawds of our bellies, Dad and
I; but there's a difference between that and goin' empty. Ask Pammy!"
she added, with a twitch and a grin.

"I've heard you say, anyway, that you was afraid Mr Rogers'd go to the
naughty place. A dozen times I've heard you say it."

"Rats!--you never did. What you heard me say was that he'd go to hell,
and I was sure of it. . . . And you may call it weak, but I can't bear
it," the child broke out with a cry of distress, intertwisting her
fingers and wringing them. "It's dreadful--dreadful!--to sit by and
watch him lyin' there, with his mind workin' and no power to speak.
All the time he's wantin' to say something to me, and--and--Where's
Cap'n Hocken?"

"In his parlour. I heard his step in the passage, ten minutes ago, an'
the door close."

"I'm goin' down to him, if you'll excuse me," said Fancy, rising from
the bedroom chair into which she had dropped in her sudden access of
grief.

"Why?"

"I dunno. . . . He's a good man, for one thing. You haven't noticed any
difference in him?"

"Since when?" The question obviously took Mrs Bowldler by surprise.

"Since he heard--yesterday--"

"Me bein' single-handed, with Palmerston on his back, so to speak, I
hev' not taken particular observation," said Mrs Bowldler. "Last night,
as I removed the cloth after supper, he passed the remark that it had
been a very tirin' day, that this was sad news about Mr Rogers, but we'd
hope for the best, and when I mentioned scrambled eggs for breakfast, he
left it to me. Captain Hunken on the other hand chose haddock: he did
mention--come to think of it and when I happened to say that a second
stroke was mostly fatal--he did go so far as to say that all flesh was
grass and that Palmerston would require feedin' up after what he'd gone
through."

"He--Cap'n Hunken--didn' seem worried in mind, either?"

"Nothing to notice. Of course," added Mrs Bowldler, "you understand
that our appetites are not what they were: that there has been a distink
droppin' off since--you know what. They both eats, in a fashion, but
where's the pleasure in pleasin' 'em? Heart-renderin', I call it, when
a devilled kidney might be a p