Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/240

232, she placed a glowing tumbler by her mistress's elbow. But in the sunken prostration of her intellect, the old woman was insensible even to her consolation: she sipped and drank, it is true; but, as if the stream warmed not the benumbed region through which it passed, she continued muttering in a crazed and groaning key, "Is this your gratitude, you sarpent! why does not you bring the tape I tells you? Am I of a age to drink water like a oss, you nasty thing! Oh, to think as ever I should live to be desarted!"

Inattentive to these murmurs, which she felt unreasonable, the bouncing Martha now quitted the room, to repair to her "upper household" avocations. The man at the hearth was the only companion left to the widow. Gazing at her for a moment, as she sat whining, with a rude compassion in his eye, and slowly munching his toast which he had now buttered, and placed in a delf plate on the hob, this person thus soothingly began—

"Ah, Dame Lobkins, if so be as ow little Paul vas a vith you, it vould be a gallows comfort to you in your latter hend!"

The name of Paul made the good woman