"True as you say, sir; and it's not me that has anything to say about it. I never gave the man a nay. But you see, my wife, she always do be wanting to get her head up in the world; and since she took to the shopkeeping--" "The shopkeeping!" I said, with some surprise; "I didn't know that." "Well, you see, sir, it's only for a quarter or so of the year. You know it's a favourite walk for the folks as comes here for the bathing--past our house, to see the great cave down below; and my wife, she got a bit of a sign put up, and put a few ginger-beer bottles in the window, and--" "A bad place for the ginger-beer," I said. "They were only empty ones, with corks and strings, you know, sir. My wife, she know better than put the ginger-beer its own self in the sun. But I do think she carry her head higher after that; and a farm-labourer, as they call them, was none good enough for her daughter." "And hasn't she been kind to her since she married, then?" "She's never done her no harm, sir." "But she hasn't gone to see her very often, or asked her to come and see you very often, I suppose?" "There's ne'er a one o' them crossed the door of the other," he answered, with some evident feeling of his own in the matter. "Ah; but you don't approve of that yourself, Stokes?" "Approve of it? No, sir. I be a farm-labourer once myself; and so I do want to see my own daughter now and then. But she take after her mother, she do. I don't know which of the two it is as does it, but there's no coming and going between Carpstone and this." We were approaching the house. I told Stokes he had better let her know I was there; for that, if she had changed her mind, it was not too late for me to go home again without disturbing her. He came back saying she was still very anxious to see me. "Well, Mrs. Stokes, how do you feel to-day?" I asked, by way of opening the conversation. "I don't think you look much worse." "I be much worse, sir. You don't know what I suffer, or you wouldn't make so little of it. I be very bad." "I know you are very ill, but I hope you are not too ill to tell me why you are so anxious to see me. You have got something to tell me, I suppose." With pale and death-like countenance, she appeared to be fighting more with herself than with the disease which yet had nearly overcome her. The drops stood upon her forehead, and she did not speak. Wishing to help her, if I might, I said-- "Was it about your daughter you wanted to speak to me?" "No," she muttered. "I have nothing to say about my daughter. She was my own. I could do as I pleased with her." I thought with myself, we must have a word about that by and by, but meantime she must relieve her heart of the one thing whose pressure she feels. "Then," I said, "you want to tell me about something that was not your own?" "Who said I ever took what was not my own?" she returned fiercely. "Did Stokes dare to say I took anything that wasn't my own?"