‘It’s my poor old wife is lying here,’ he said; ‘the heavens be her bed! God rest her soul this day! Many’s the long year since she wint from me, poor Norry, and left me sore and lonesome! She was well on in years then, though the childer were young; for we were married a long time before there was any. The neighbours were all at me to marry again, if it was only for one to wash the shirt or knit the stocking for me, or to keep the weenochs from running wild about the roads while I was away at my work earning their bit. But I couldn’t give in to the notion. I was used to my poor Norry, and the thoughts of a stranger on the floor was bitter to my heart. Ah, it’s a sore loss to a man in years when his old wife is took from him! The old comrade he’s had so long; that understands every turn of him, and knows his humours and his fancies; and fits him as easy and comfortable as an old shoe. A man might get a new one—and maybe more sightly to look at than the one that’s gone—but dear knows, ’twould be at his peril! As likely as not, she’d fret him and heart-scald him, and make him oneasy day and night, just blistering like new leather! The old wife is like the shoe he’s used to, that will lie into his foot. Stretching here and giving there, and coming, by constant wearing, to fit, as easy and souple as the skin itself, into th’ exactness of every bump and contrairy spot! For there’s none of us,’ continued the old man, who seemed to be a bit of a moralist, ‘that hasn’t our tendher places and our corns and oddities in body and mind, God help us! Some more and some less, according. And there’s no one can know where them raw spots lie, or how to save ’em from being hurt, like the loving crathur that’s been next us through the long years, in rain and shine. So yer honours,’ he added, getting up with a last sorrowful look at his wife’s grave, ‘I wouldn’t hearken to the neighbours, and take a strange comrade. And after a while a widow sister o’ mine came to live with me and to care my poor orphans; but my heart is still with my poor Norry here in the clay!’ There was another loving couple in the same neighbourhood, whose apparently impending separation by death caused much sympathy among their friends. The man was a farmer, and owing to his industry and good conduct, he and his young wife were in comfortable circumstances and well to do. They were devoted to each other. When he was attacked with the severe illness that threatened his life, she nursed him night and day until she was wasted to a shadow, and looked from anxiety and want of sleep almost as corpse-like as he did. Her misery when the doctors pronounced the case hopeless was dreadful to witness. The poor fellow’s strength was, they said, nearly exhausted, his illness had lasted so long; so that his holding out was considered impossible.