Sarah cherished no illusions, but, like nearly all who were acquainted with him, she was a victim of his compelling charm. “Poor dear gentleman!” Sarah had said, after his funeral. “He had his faults, like the best of us—not that I’m saying he was the best, because telling farra-diddles is what I don’t hold with, and there’s few knows better than me that you couldn’t depend on him, not for a moment, while as for the way he wasted his money it used to put me into such a tweak that there were times when I didn’t know how to keep my tongue between my teeth! He never took thought to the morrow, and nor did my poor dear mistress neither. You never knew where you was, for there wouldn’t be enough money to buy one scraggy chicken in the market one day, and the next he’d come in singing out that the dibs was in tune, and not a thought in his head or my mistress’ but how to spend it quickest. Well, he told me once that it was no use ringing a peal over him for going to low gaminghouses, because he was born with a spring in his elbow, and there was no sport in playing cards and such in the regiment, for nearly all the officers was living on their pay, same as he was himself. But this I will say for him! there was never a sweeter-tempered nor a kinder-hearted man alive!”

“Ay,” had agreed Mr Nidd, rather doubtfully. “Though it don’t seem to me as he behaved very kind to Miss Kate, leaving her like he done with a lot of debts to pay, and nobbut his prize-money to do it with—what was left of it, which, by what you told me, wasn’t so very much neither.”

“He always thought he’d win a fortune! And how was he to know he was going to meet his end like he has? Oh, Joe, I wish he’d been killed at Waterloo, for this is worse than anything! When I think of him that was always so gay, and up to the knocker, no matter whether he was plump in the pocket or regularly in the basket, being knocked down by a common tax-cart, well, it makes me thankful my poor mistress ain’t alive to see it, which is a thing I never thought to be! And my lamb left alone, without a sixpence to scratch with, and she so devoted to her pa! I never ought to have married you, Joe, and it weighs on me that I let you wheedle me into it, for if ever Miss Kate needed me she needs me now!”