The three months paid for had run out and we had got without any fresh overtures as to payment into May my dear, when there came an obligation upon Mr. Edson to go a business expedition right across the Isle of Man, which fell quite unexpected upon that pretty little thing and is not a place that according to my views is particularly in the way to anywhere at any time but that may be a matter of opinion.  So short a notice was it that he was to go next day, and dreadfully she cried poor pretty, and I am sure I cried too when I saw her on the cold pavement in the sharp east wind—­it being a very backward spring that year—­taking a last leave of him with her pretty bright hair blowing this way and that and her arms clinging round his neck and him saying “There there there.  Now let me go Peggy.”  And by that time it was plain that what the Major had been so accommodating as to say he would not object to happening in the house, would happen in it, and I told her as much when he was gone while I comforted her with my arm up the staircase, for I says “You will soon have others to keep up for my pretty and you must think of that.”

His letter never came when it ought to have come and what she went through morning after morning when the postman brought none for her the very postman himself compassionated when she ran down to the door, and yet we cannot wonder at its being calculated to blunt the feelings to have all the trouble of other people’s letters and none of the pleasure and doing it oftener in the mud and mizzle than not and at a rate of wages more resembling Little Britain than Great.  But at last one morning when she was too poorly to come running down-stairs he says to me with a pleased look in his face that made me next to love the man in his uniform coat though he was dripping wet “I have taken you first in the street this morning Mrs. Lirriper, for here’s the one for Mrs. Edson.”  I went up to her bedroom with it as fast as ever I could go, and she sat up in bed when she saw it and kissed it and tore it open and then a blank stare came upon her.  “It’s very short!” she says lifting her large eyes to my face.  “O Mrs. Lirriper it’s very short!” I says “My dear Mrs. Edson no doubt that’s because your husband hadn’t time to write more just at that time.”  “No doubt, no doubt,” says she, and puts her two hands on her face and turns round in her bed.

I shut her softly in and I crept down-stairs and I tapped at the Major’s door, and when the Major having his thin slices of bacon in his own Dutch oven saw me he came out of his chair and put me down on the sofa.  “Hush!” says he, “I see something’s the matter.  Don’t speak—­take time.”  I says “O Major I’m afraid there’s cruel work up-stairs.”  “Yes yes” says he “I had begun to be afraid of it—­take time.”  And then in opposition to his own words he rages out frightfully, and says “I shall never forgive myself Madam, that I, Jemmy Jackman, didn’t see it all that morning—­didn’t go straight up-stairs when my boot-sponge was in my hand—­didn’t force it down his throat—­and choke him dead with it on the spot!”