Again Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. “Dere wadn’t much I didn’t do for him. ’E was me master, an’--O God, help us!--we’d laugh over it walkin’ together after dark in them paved streets, an’ me corns fair wrenchin’ in me boots! I’d never been like that before. Ner he! Ner he!” Mrs. Fettley clucked sympathetically. “An’ when did ye come to the eend?” she asked. “When ’e paid it all back again, every penny. Then I knowed, but I wouldn’t _suffer_ meself to know. ‘You’ve been mortal kind to me,’ he says. ‘Kind!’ I said. ‘’Twixt _us_?’ But ’e kep’ all on tellin’ me ’ow kind I’d been an’ ’e’d never forget it all his days. I held it from off o’ me for three evenin’s, because I would _not_ believe. Then ’e talked about not bein’ satisfied with ’is job in the stables, an’ the men there puttin’ tricks on ’im, an’ all they lies which a man tells when ’e’s leavin’ ye. I heard ’im out, neither ’elpin’ nor ’inderin’. At the last, I took off a liddle brooch which he’d give me an’ I says: ‘Dat’ll do. _I_ ain’t askin’ na’un.’ An’ I turned me round an’ walked off to me own sufferin’s. ’E didn’t make ’em worse. ’E didn’t come nor write after that. ’E slipped off ’ere back ’ome to ’is mother again.” “An’ ’ow often did ye look for ’en to come back?” Mrs. Fettley demanded mercilessly. “More’n once--more’n once! Goin’ over the streets we’d used, I thought de very pave-stones ’ud shruck out under me feet.” “Yes,” said Mrs. Fettley. “I dunno but dat don’t ’urt as much as aught else. An’ dat was all ye got?” “No. ’Twadn’t. That’s the curious part, if you’ll believe it, Liz.” “I do. I lay you’re further off lyin’ now than in all your life, Gra’.” “I am.... An’ I suffered, like I’d not wish my most arrantest enemies to. God’s Own Name! I went through the hoop that spring! One part of it was headaches which I’d never known all me days before. Think o’ _me_ with an ’eddick! But I come to be grateful for ’em. They kep’ me from thinkin’....” “’Tis like a tooth,” Mrs. Fettley commented. “It must rage an’ rugg till it tortures itself quiet on ye; an’ then--then there’s na’un left.”