"He is more so than he was. But his wife, who helps the poor liberally
in the winter, is of twice the use in the parish that he is, with his
inopportune 'spiritchus visits.' I have remonstrated with him about
going to the cottages between twelve and one, when dinner is being eaten
and the men want a bit of rest, but he professes that it is the only
time to catch them in-doors. I suppose Molton won't bear it, and takes
up his food and walks out. Yet Beechhurst might have a worse pastor than
poor Wiley. He is a man I pity--a martyr to dyspepsia and a gloomy
imagination. But I will not deny that he often raises my choler still."
The doctor was on the verge of having it raised now.
At the last bend of the road to the village, and nearly opposite the
forge, was a small cabin of one room, the abode of the respectable Mrs.
Wallop, the mainstay of Beechhurst as a nurse in last illnesses and
dangerous cases--a woman of heart and courage, though perhaps of too
imaginative a style of conversation. Although it was but a work-day, she
was sitting at her own door in her Sunday black gown and bonnet, and,
like Niobe, all tears. Mr. Carnegie pulled up in sheer amazement at the
deplorable spectacle his valued right hand was making of herself in
public, and, as if she had been on the watch for him, up she rose from
her stool and came forward to answer his unspoken questions.
"Ay, Mr. Carnegie, sir, you may well ask what I am doing at home all day
idle," said she.
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