‘Mr. Oliver,’ said Mrs. Polley, in a loud, harsh voice which startled everybody, ‘I have sent for you in case I should not live another night. How do I know when them as I’ve seen full of youth and life and gladness is took in the twinkling of an eye? I want to thank you before I die, and I may never have another chance. Yes, I know all you have done for my ’Mily this day. You have stood beside her—both as a bride and as a corpse. When every friend she had gave my gal up, and left her to be despised and trodden upon, when the mother as bore and had turned her adrift, that so her folly might grow into sin, showed no mercy, you came to her and let her feel she had one friend left on earth, so that she might be able to believe that she had still a Father and Saviour in heaven. You have ordered her coffin and undertook, if necessary, to pay for it, and are ready to see all that the cruel, grinding, tearing wheels left of her, laid in it, and to help to carry her yourself to the churchyard. Mr. Oliver, my thanks ain’t worth much; for aught that I know, they may be no better than ill wishes and curses, since I was the unnatural mother as shut ’Mily out into the street, where she had no refuge, save the base villain that had decoyed her from her mother’s roof. Hold your tongue, Polley, and you gals, and you, sir, though you were thrice my pastor,’ addressing Mr. Holland, as he came softly and sorrowfully into the room. She resisted fiercely all attempts of her frightened husband and children and the other awed bystanders to stay her wild self-accusation. ‘I will speak out. I’ve sung my own praises and been my own trumpeter many’s the time. I’ll publish likewise my barbarous cruelty. It was I as denounced my own daughter and condemned her to destruction and an early grave. So what would it serve you, Mr. Oliver, though you were to let me go down on my knees and bless you, because you had more pity on my ’Mily—my bright, clever ’Mily, that is now as cold and still as a clod of the walley, than her wicked mother had on her poor, thoughtless child?’ ‘You loved her better than yourself, all the time you blamed her most,’ Oliver told the miserable woman. ‘It was your very love for her, and pride in her, which made you hard. She knew that then; she knows it better now.’