And after three days' fruitless vigil,
there was no use hoping further. A priest came to our small cottage,
and said some words as empty as the promise of afterlife. My brother
and I held candles in our hands, and I think he was truly shocked that
I shed not a single tear. He could not know that my nights for many
years had been filled with them, and that those last, worry-sick three
had drained the well to its dregs, and beyond. That was the end of it.
My first love was gone, leaving me a widow at nineteen, wholly without
means.
"My brother did what he could for me, I'll give him that. And he would
have played the father well enough for you, if the Fever* hadn't got
him first. They're not all bad; I do know it. But the good ones with
hearts that feel, are forever and always at the mercy of them that
don't---the aggressive lot who just take, and trample, without
thinking.
*Typhus.
"But here, I'm ahead of myself, and you look near done-in. Into bed
with you now, and enough of my sad stories."
"No!" said her daughter at once.
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