s's opinion, it was six of one and half-a-dozen of the
other. Mrs. Dempster had never been like other women; she had always a
flighty way with her, carrying parcels of snuff to old Mrs. Tooke, and
going to drink tea with Mrs. Brinley, the carpenter's wife; and then
never taking care of her clothes, always wearing the same things week-day
or Sunday. A man has a poor look-out with a wife of that sort. Mr.
Phipps, amiable and laconic, wondered how it was women were so fond of
running each other down.

Mr. Pratt having been called in provisionally to a patient of Mr.
Pilgrim's in a case of compound fracture, observed in a friendly colloquy
with his brother surgeon the next day,--'So Dempster has left off driving
himself, I see; he won't end with a broken neck after all. You'll have a
case of meningitis and delirium tremens instead.'

'Ah,' said Mr. Pilgrim, 'he can hardly stand it much longer at the rate
he's going on, one would think. He's been confoundedly cut up about that
business of Armstrong's, I fancy. It may do him some harm, perhaps, but
Dempster must have feathered his nest pretty well; he can afford to lose
a little business.'

'His business will outlast him, that's pretty clear,' said Pratt; 'he'll
run down like a watch with a broken spring one of these days.'

Another prognostic of evil to Dempster came at the beginning of March.
For then little 'Mamsey' died--died suddenly. The housemaid found her
seated motionless in her arm-chair, her knitting fallen down, and the
tortoise-shell cat reposing on it unreproved. The little white old woman
had ended her wintry age of patient sorrow, believing to the last that
'Robert might have been a good husband as he had been a good son.'

When the earth was thrown on Mamsey's coffin, and the son, in crape scarf
and hatband, turned away homeward, his good angel, lingering with
outstretched wing on the edge of the grave, cast one despairing look
after him, and took flight for ever.

Chapter 14

The last week in March--three weeks after old Mrs. Dempster
died--occurred the unpleasant winding-up of affairs between Dempster and
Mr. Pryme, and under this additional source of irritation the attorney's
diurnal drunkenness had taken on its most ill-tempered and brutal phase.
On the Friday morning, before setting out for Rotherby, he told his wife
that he had invited 'four men' to dinner at half-past six that evening.
The previous night had been a terrible one for Janet