Page:Lorna Doone - a romance of Exmoor (IA lornadooneromanc691blac).pdf/56

 felt of grief himself, he was not angry with her, but left her to begin again.

"Loth would I be," said mother, sobbing with her new red handkerchief, and looking at the pattern of it, "loth indeed, Sir Ensor Doone, to accuse any one unfairly. But I have lost the very best husband God ever gave to a woman; and I knew hin when he was to your belt, and I not up to your knee, sir; and never an unkind word he spoke, nor stopped me short in speaking. All the herbs he left to me, and all the bacon-curing, and when it was best to kill a pig, and how to treat the maidens. Not that I would ever wish—oh, John, it seems so strange to me, and last week you were everything."

Here mother burst out crying again, not loudly, but turning quietly, because she knew that no one now would ever care to wipe the tears. And fifty or a hundred things, of weekly and daily happening, came across my mother, so that her spirit fell like slackening lime.

"This matter must be seen to; it shall be seen to at once," the old man answered, moved a little in spite of all his knowledge. "Madam, if any wrong has been done, trust the honour of a Doone; I will redress it to my utmost. Come inside and rest yourself, while I ask about it. What was your good husband's name, and when and where fell this mishap?"

"Deary me," said mother, as he set a chair for her very polite; but she would not sit upon it; "Saturday morning I was a wife, sir; and Saturday night I was a