“Oh, yes; you’re different. You can go everywheres. But what can a lone woman do? I’ll tell you what, doctor; I’d give it all up to have Roger back with his apron on and his pick in his hand. How well I mind his look when he’d come home o’ nights.” “And yet it was a hard life you had then, eh, old woman? It would be better for you to be thankful for what you’ve got.” “I am thankful. Didn’t I tell you so before?” said she, somewhat crossly. “But it’s a sad life, this living alone. I declares I envy Hannah, ’cause she’s got Jemima to sit in the kitchen with her. I want her to sit with me sometimes, but she won’t.” “Ah! but you shouldn’t ask her. It’s letting yourself down.” “What do I care about down or up? It makes no difference, as he’s gone. If he had lived one might have cared about being up, as you call it. Eh, deary; I’ll be going after him before long, and it will be no matter then.” “We shall all be going after him, sooner or later; that’s sure enough.” “Eh, dear, that’s true, surely. It’s only a span long, as Parson Oriel tells us when he gets romantic in his sermons. But it’s a hard thing, doctor, when two is married, as they can’t have their span, as he calls it, out together. Well, I must only put up with it, I suppose, as others does. Now, you’re not going, doctor? You’ll stop and have a dish of tea with me. You never see such cream as Hannah has from the Alderney cow. Do’ey now, doctor.” But the doctor had his letter to write, and would not allow himself to be tempted even by the promise of Hannah’s cream. So he went his way, angering Lady Scatcherd by his departure as he had before angered the squire, and thinking as he went which was most unreasonable in her wretchedness, his friend Lady Arabella, or his friend Lady Scatcherd. The former was always complaining of an existing husband who never refused her any moderate request; and the other passed her days in murmuring at the loss of a dead husband, who in his life had ever been to her imperious and harsh, and had sometimes been cruel and unjust. The doctor had his letter to write, but even yet he had not quite made up his mind what he would put into it; indeed, he had not hitherto resolved to whom it should be written. Looking at the matter as he had endeavoured to look at it, his niece, Mrs. Gresham, would be his correspondent; but if he brought himself to take this jump in the dark, in that case he would address himself direct to Miss Dunstable.