t like wild cats for the things. That was
yesterday, and you see all they have left me; cleaned out everything
down to my new yellow satin, and then asked for more. They wanted to
know where my jewellery was, but I did them, hee, hee!"

"Meaning, marm?"

"Meaning that I hid it, that is, what was left of it, under a board.
But that ain't the worst. When I was asleep that devil Ellen, who's
had her share all these years, got to the board and collared the
things and bolted with them, and look what she's left me instead," and
she held up a scrap of paper, "a receipt for five years' wages, and
she's had them over and over again. Ah, if ever I get a chance at
her," and she doubled her long hand and made a motion as of a person
scratching. "She's bolted and left me here to starve. I haven't had a
bit since yesterday, nor a drink either, and that's worse. What's to
become of me? I'm starving. I shall have to go to the workhouse. Yes,
me," she added in a scream, "me, who have spent thousands; I shall
have to go to a workhouse like a common woman!"

"It's cruel, marm, cruel," said the sympathetic George, "and you a
lawful wedded wife 'till death do us part.' But, marm, I saw a public
over the way. Now, no offence, but you'll let me just go over and
fetch a bite and a sup."

"Well," she answered hungrily, "you're a gent, you are, though you're
a country one. You go, while I just make a little toilette, and as for
the drink, why let it be brandy."

"Brandy it shall be," said the gallant George, and departed.

In ten minutes he returned with a supply of beef patties, and a bottle
of good, strong "British Brown," which as everybody knows is a
sufficient quantity to render three privates or two blue-jackets drunk
and incapable.

The woman, who now presented a slightly more respectable appearance,
seized the bottle, and pouring about a wine-glass and a half of its
contents into a tumbler mixed it with an equal quantity of water and
drank it off at a draught.

"That's better," she said, "and now for a patty. It's a real picnic,
this is."

He handed her one, but she could not eat more than half of it, for
alcohol destroys the healthier appetites, and she soon went back to
the brandy bottle.

"Now, marm, that you are a little more comfortable, perhaps you will
tell me how as you got into this way, and you with a rich husband, as
I well knows, to love and cherish you."

"A husband to love and cherish me?" she said; "why, I h