Mrs. Marks could scarcely move her limbs at all now, except to creep down the narrow stairs of a day into the small parlour, where she sat and scolded to her heart's content, Sarah, the girl who came as a help now the mistress was ill, following her every movement with her eyes, if she could not with her feet. As her sister grew worse, Jane roused herself wonderfully, becoming as active as before she had been idle, and apparently as sane as she had been crazy; while as to Matthew, he turned into a model husband, helping in the work to be done as far as lay in his power, and nursing his sick wife with a tender solicitude quite foreign to his nature, while she grumbled at everything and everyone in turn, her eye, as I have said before, finding out their shortcomings in a moment, and denouncing them without mercy. But she was ill, must be ill to sit there so quietly and allow others to scrub down the table or be up to their elbows in the washing-tub; she deserved their pity and their silence, and they gave her both. "There, that will do," said she one day, as Matthew tried to settle the pillows more comfortably at her back. "I don't think it's near so easy like as it was before you touched it, but it wouldn't be you if you didn't want always to have a finger in the pie. Sarah, leave off that racket among the cups and saucers; what on earth are you at, girl? Are you trying to break them all? What are you after?" "I was a-dusting of the shelves, Mum," was the reply. "Fine dusting, upon my word, and with a corner of your apron, too; be off and fetch a cloth this moment, such slop-work as that'll never do here; let me catch you at it again, that's all, or that clatter of the crockery either, when my head aches and buzzes like as if a thousand mills was at work in it." "There, rest quiet, Missus," said Matthew; "it'll be all right by-and-bye." "That's as much as you know about it. I tell yer I never felt so bad, like, in all my life." "Ain't it most time to take the doctor's stuff?" suggested Matthew, meekly. "I'm sick of the medicine, and the doctor too. What good has he done me? I should like to know. I can't walk no better than I could a month ago. My limbs is as stiff as ever, and just every bit as painful." "That comes of them mad walks yer took in all weathers; yer would tramp about, and it's been t' undoing of yer altogether." A torrent of words followed this, of which Matthew took no heed, until she leant back, apparently exhausted, saying, "I feel awful bad. I wonder whatever in the world ails me?" "How d'yer feel?" asked her husband, compassionately. "My head whizzes, and I'm all over in a cold sweat, like; only feel my hand, don't it burn like a live coal?" "It do seem as though it were afire," he replied. "Seem!" cried Mrs. Marks. "Is that all the pity yer have in your heart for maybe your dying wife?"