’Nay, I won’t say that. We’re a’ sinful creeturs, and our temptations is terrible. Wot became o’ him I can’na say, but fur sure sartin he’d a mind to retarn to me, or he’d not ha’ tow’d me keep t’pipe aleet. Wha can tell, he may ha’ got a drop o’ liquor on shore, and ha’ been robbed, and then ashamed to come back and tell me; or he may ha’ found t’chap none so ready to sell t’good-will—and so ha’ gone about looiking for summat else and not found it—or he may ha’ been took by them rampagin’ an’ roarin’ lions, as seek whom they can lock up—the perlice. Nay! I’ll not condemn him, and allow that he wor a rascal, for what sez Tom Treddlehoyle:
’"This world, we all naw, hez its ups and its daans, An’ shorter, wi’r time keeps windin’, An’ day after day we are crost i’ wir way, Then speak of a man as yo find him."
’But I think you found him serve you badly enough,’ said Mr. Pennycomequick, from his berth, ’to walk off with your savings and leave you with nothing.’
’Nay, not exactly,’ answered Anne. ’There wor this pipe for wun, he left; and,’ after a pause, ’there wer Jozeph. T’bairn came varra comfortin’ when I wer i’ a tew aboot loising ma’ brass. Besides, t’ lad, Joe, ha’ been ov use to me as much as I paid a lad afore seven shilling a week, and he hev a’ been t’same to me for six years. If tha comes ta reckon at fifty-two weeks i’t year, that’s eighteen pound ten per hannum; and for six year that mounts up to nigh on a hundred and ten pound, which is a scoering off of t’ account.’
’Ees, for sartaen. I sed I’d keep’t aleet, and if he comes back at t’ end o’ seven more year, I’ll say, "There, Earle, is t’pipe burning, and as for’t account, Joe hev a’ scored it off, interest and principal."’
It is hateful—hateful as poison—the packing, the turning out of drawers, and then the tilting of the drawers to get out the dust and grit and flue that has accumulated in the corners; the arranging of correspondence, the discrimination between valuables and things that may become valuable, and things that are not, but were valuable; the throwing away of rubbish, the consideration as to what things are to be disposed of, and if disposed of, how to be disposed of, and to whom, and all the business and care and misery of change of quarters.