"I said she was a Welshwoman," interrupted Charlotte Pain. "She was smoking, was she not, Margery?" "She's smoking a filthy short pipe," wrathfully returned Margery. "But for that, I should have said she was a decent body--although it's next to impossible to understand her tongue. She puts in ten words of Welsh to two of English. Of course they have no money to furnish for it; it wouldn't be them, if they had; so they are wanting to get it out of me. Fifteen or twenty pounds! My word! They'd like me to end my days in the workhouse." "You might turn a deaf ear, Margery," said George. "I know I might; and many a hundred times have I vowed I would," returned Margery. "But there's she in her bed, poor thing, sobbing and moaning, and asking if Nick is to be quite abandoned. The worse a lad turns out, the more a mother clings to him--as it seems to me. Let me be here, or let me be at Ashlydyat, I have no peace for their wants. By word of mouth or by letter they are on at me for ever." "If 'Nick' has a father, why can he not supply him?" asked Charlotte. "It's a sensible question, Miss Pain," said the woman. "Nick's father is one of those stinging-nettles that only encumber the world, doing no good for themselves nor for anybody else. 'Minister' Bray, indeed! it ought to be something else, I think. Many a one has had cause to rue the hour that he 'ministered' for them!" "How does he minister?--what do you mean?" wondered Charlotte. "He marries folks; that's his ne'er-do-well occupation, Miss Pain. Give him a five-shilling piece, and he'd marry a boy to his grandmother. I'm Scotch by birth--though it's not much that I have lived in the land--but, I do say, that to suffer such laws to stand good, is a sin and a shame. Two foolish children--and many of those that go to him are no better--stand before him for a half-minute, and he pronounces them to be man and wife! And man and wife they are, and must remain so, till the grave takes one of them: whatever their repentance may be when they wake up from their folly. It's just one of the blights upon bonny Scotland." Margery, with no ceremonious leave-taking, turned at the last words, and continued her way. George Godolphin smiled at the blank expression displayed on Charlotte Pain's countenance. Had Margery talked in Welsh, as did the old woman with the pipe, she could not have less understood her.