"You'll be his forever," she said. "Well, I wouldn't have him--not for no price. I wouldn't be his wife, not if you was to pay me for it. And the other lad, he'll come back from sea, and he won't like to see you Isaac's wife. It's a wrong promise you ha' made, Bet Granger; and you needn't go for to tell me nothing else. If I was you, I wouldn't keep it. Don't 'ee, now, Bet--don't 'ee. Think of the other poor sailor feller--how he'll look at yer when he comes back from sea!" At first, when Jenny spoke like this, Bet had shut her up with a few sharp words, but of late she had taken no notice; her face every day had grown duller, and her words further apart. Her whole attitude was so dull and lifeless that Jenny gave up teasing her; and finding that, from being an entertaining companion, she was now one of the dullest, left her a good deal to herself. Bet sat on in the attic, and presently the fire went out, and only the moonlight lit up her little dreary room. Bet closed her eyes, and fell into a heavy doze; she slept for about ten minutes, and, whether that sleep had refreshed her, and lifted a cloud from her brain, no one can say, but she awoke in quite a different mood: the apathy and indifference of the last few days had left her; she was once more keenly alive, keenly suffering and rebellious. The events of the two last months--all the story which had come to her since her mother's death-kept flitting like a series of pictures before her vivid imagination. She saw Will's face with a tender light in the eyes; she felt his breath on her cheek, and her hand seemed again to be clasped in his. Once more she heard Hester and Will singing together-- "I had a message to send her-- To be whom my soul loved best, But I had my task to finish, And she had gone home to rest." Bet saw once more the little room in Sparrow Street, and the smile, the look so full of satisfaction, on her dead mother's face. "Oh, mother, mother!" she sobbed. She fell on her knees, and the tears streamed through the fingers which covered her face. "Oh mother! life ha' gone hard--bitter, bitter hard--for poor Bet. I ha' broke my word to you--and the lads, I dunno where they are. Oh, I'm good for nought--I'm good for nought--I wish I were lying dead beside my mother!" She sobbed and sobbed; and her tears, while they seemed to rend her heart, brough a certain sense of lightness and relief. "Mother, you was a good woman-you believed in religion and all that. I didn't. I were allers a hard 'un--allers, and allers; but I'd give the world,--mother, mother, hear me, hear me, ef you can, up in heaven with God!--I'd give all the wide world to be _good_, GOOD, to-night!" Again Bet seemed to hear Will and Hester singing to her-- "And I know that at last my message Has passed through the golden gate, And my heart is no longer restless, And I am content to wait."