Miriam knew the "missus" well. She was a little thin-lipped woman, who, notwithstanding her poverty, was most particularly clean. No speck of dirt was to be seen on her person or in her cottage, but she was as hard as flint. She never showed the least affection for her husband. They had married late in life--why, nobody could tell--and had one child, a girl, whom the mother seemed to disregard just as she did her husband, saving that she dressed her and washed her with the same care which she bestowed on her kettle and candlesticks. "It's a good thing for you, Fitchew, that she is what she is." Fitchew hesitated for some time. "Yes, well, I said to myself, after I'd had a cup of tea and something to eat this morning--I didn't say it afore then, though--that it might be wuss. If she was allus a slaverin' on me and a pityin' me, it wouldn't do me no good; and then we are as we are, and we must make the best of it." When Miriam parted from Fitchew she had still ten minutes' walk. Before the ten minutes had expired the black veil of rain-cloud was rolled still farther to the east, and the crescent of the young moon gleamed in the dying twilight. It poured with rain nevertheless during the night Miriam lay and listened, thinking it would be wet and miserable on the following day. She dropped off to sleep, and at four she rose and went to the window and opened it wide. In streamed the fresh south-west morning air, pure, delicious, scented with all that was sweet from fields and woods, and the bearer inland even as far as Cowfold of Atlantic vitality, dissipating fogs, disinfecting poisons--the Life-Giver.