go through it, if you
like, to make sure I 'aven't took none of your rubbige away with me!
I'm a-going, I am! The master he come and give me notice to leave at
the end o' the month, but I don't choose to stay in no sech a place so
long. I've 'ad enough of a tipsy missus, and an' ouse without an atim
o' comfit! I'm a-goin!"

The woman on the sofa, with the inflamed, red face, the bloodshot,
painful-looking eyes, the loose mouth, looked helplessly upon the
maid-of-all-work.

"A little drop of something to quench my thirst before you go!" she
implored. "I can't get up to fetch it for myself, as you know, Maria;
and my throat's swelled up with being so parched."

"And if you die of it, so much the better!" Maria said frankly. But she
went and pumped some water, all the same, and brought it to her, the
glass dimmed in her red, bare hand. "For all I've had to demean myself
to wait on sich as you, I'm a Christian!" she said.

"A leetle drop of the brandy left, Maria?" the woman asked.

"Trust you for that! Not a drop!"

"Drain the bottle and see, Maria."

"You are a one, you are!" the emancipated servant said. "I ha' seen a
sight o' bad 'uns, but never one like you. And if I was th' master, I'd
up and chuck you inter th' street, see if I wouldn't, and git a little
peace in 'is 'ome with a diff'runt woman than you! 'E wouldn't have to
go far, neither, before 'e found one to 'is mind, master wouldn't, an'
so I tell you! An' as for me, I'm done with you, so there!"

The woman looked after her as she bounced to the door, hiccoughing,
holding the now empty glass in her shaking hand. Her brows were knit;
she seemed in her muddled brain to be considering something.

"The girl Grantley promised she'd come to-day," she said. "She promised
she'd bring me something."

"And did so, right enough. But you 'aven't got no memory nor nothin'!"

"Where is it, then, Maria dear? For my poor head's splitting----"

"Why, in th' basket as stan' agin your sofy, where you put it yourself,
for I see ye do it."

Left to herself, the woman put the glass to her lips, sucked from it
the few drops that hung upon its sides, lay with it in her hand,
alternately looking into it and looking into space, lifting it to her
lips again and again.

The machinery of her mind was too far destroyed for it to work in any
suggested groove. It strayed off the line continually into all sorts of
hazy, dim byways.

A disgrace!

She had broken her word to