"To get 'e, an' lose 'e again inside two year. That's ill luck if ever I seen it. Death's a envious twoad. Two short year of you; an' then up comes a tumour on his neck unbeknawnst, an' off he goes, like a spring lamb." "An' so he did. I waked from sleep an' bid un rise, but theer weern't no more risin' for him till the Judgment." "Death's no courtier. He'll let a day-labourer go so peaceful an' butivul as a child full o' milk goes to sleep; while he'll take a gert lord or dook, wi' lands an' moneys, an' strangle un by inches, an' give un the hell of a twistin'. You caan't buy a easy death seemin'ly." "A gude husband he was, but jealous," said Mrs. Coomstock, her thoughts busy among past years; and Billy immediately fell in with this view. "Then you'm well rid of un. Theer's as gude in the world alive any minute as ever was afore or will be again." "Let 'em stop in the world then. I doan't want 'em." This sentiment amused the widow herself more than Billy. She laughed uproariously, raised her glass to her lips unconsciously, found it empty, grew instantly grave upon the discovery, set it down again, and sighed. "It's a wicked world," she said. "Sure as men's in a plaace they brings trouble an' wickedness. An' yet I've heard theer's more women than men on the airth when all's said." "God A'mighty likes 'em best, I reckon," declared Mr. Blee. "Not but what 't would be a lonesome plaace wi'out the lords of creation," conceded the widow. "Ess fay, you 'm right theer; but the beauty of things is that none need n't be lonely, placed same as you be." "'Once bit twice shy,'" said Mrs. Coomstock. Then she laughed again. "I said them very words to Lezzard not an hour since." "An' what might he have answered?" inquired Billy without, however, showing particular interest to know. "He said he wasn't bit. His wife was a proper creature." "Bah! second-hand gudes--that's what Lezzard be--a widow-man an' eighty if a day. A poor, coffin-ripe auld blid, wi' wan leg in the graave any time this twenty year." Mrs. Coomstock's frame heaved at this tremendous criticism. She gurgled and gazed at Billy with her eyes watering and her mouth open. "You say that! Eighty an' coffin-ripe!" "Ban't no ontruth, neither. A man 's allus ready for his elm overcoat arter threescore an' ten. I heard the noise of his breathin' paarts when he had brown kitty in the fall three years ago, an' awnly thrawed it off thanks to the gracious gudeness of Miller Lyddon, who sent rich stock for soup by my hand. But to hear un, you might have thought theer was a wapsies' nest in the man's lungs." "I doan't want to be nuss to a chap at my time of life, in coourse."