Throughout Saturday and Sunday Jennie pouted and dealt rudely and uncivilly with her mother; and on Monday, at the hour she was preparing to depart, Olwen relented and gave her twenty pounds, wherefore on the wedding day Lisbeth was astonished.

“Why aren’t you wearing my presents?” she asked.

“That’s it,” Jennie shouted.  “Don’t you forget to throw cold water, will you?  It wouldn’t be you if you did.  I don’t want to.  See?  And if you don’t like it, lump it.”

Olwen calmed her sister, whispering:  “She’s excited.  Don’t take notice.”

At the quickening of the second dawn after Christmas, Jennie and Bert arose, and Jennie having hidden her wedding-ring, they two went about their business; and when at noon Olwen proceeded to number seven, she found that Lisbeth had been taken sick of the palsy and was fallen upon the floor.  Lisbeth was never well again, and what time she understood all that Olwen had done for her, she melted into tears.

“I should have gone but for you,” she averred.  “The money’s Jennie’s, which is the same as I had it and under the mattress, and the house is Jennie’s.”

“She’s fortunate,” returned Olwen.  “She’ll never want for ten shillings a week which it will fetch.  You are kind indeed.”

“Don’t neglect them for me,” Lisbeth urged.  “I’ll be quite happy if you drop in occasionally.”

“Are you not my sister?” Olwen cried.  “I’m having a bed for you in our front sitting-room.  You won’t be lonely.”

Winter, spring, and summer passed, and the murmurs of Jennie and Charlie against Lisbeth were grown into a horrid clamor.

“Hush, she’ll hear you,” Olwen always implored.  “It won’t be for much longer.  The doctor says she may go any minute.”

“Or last ages,” said Charlie.

“Jennie will have the house and the money,” Olwen pleaded.  “And the money hasn’t been touched.  Same as you gave it to her.  She showed it to me under the mattress.  Not every one have two houses.”

“By then you will have bought it over and over again,” said Charlie.  “Doesn’t give Jennie and me much chance of saving, does it?”

“And she can’t eat this and can’t eat that,” Jennie screamed.  “She won’t, she means.”

Weekly was Olwen harassed with new disputes, and she rued that she had said:  “I’ll have a bed for you in our front sitting-room”; and as it falls out in family quarrels, she sided with her daughter and her daughter’s husband.

So the love of the sisters became forced and strained, each speaking and answering with an ill-favored mouth; it was no longer entire and nothing that was professed united it together.

“I must make my will now,” Lisbeth hinted darkly.

“Perhaps Charlie will oblige you,” replied Olwen.

“Charlie!  You make me smile.  Why, he can’t keep a wife.”

“I thought you had settled all that,” Olwen faltered.