George laughed gently.  “Lord!  Lord!” he said, “to see how men play it off upon poor weak women, working on their narves and that like.  He kill you!  Laryer Quest kill you, and he the biggest coward in Boisingham; but there it is.  This is a world of wrong, as the parson says, and the poor shorn lambs must jamb their tails down and turn their backs to the wind, and so must you, marm.  So it’s the workhus you’ll be in to-morrow.  Well, you’ll find it a poor place; the skilly is that rough it do fare to take the skin off your throat, and not a drop of liquor, not even of a cup of hot tea, and work too, lots of it —­scrubbing, marm, scrubbing!”

This vivid picture of miseries to come drew something between a sob and a howl from the woman.  There is nothing more horrible to the imagination of such people than the idea of being forced to work.  If their notions of a future state of punishment could be got at, they would be found in nine cases out of ten to resolve themselves into a vague conception of hard labour in a hot climate.  It was the idea of the scrubbing that particularly affected the Tiger.

“I won’t do it,” she said, “I’ll go to chokey first——­”

“Look here, marm,” said George, in a persuasive voice, and pushing the brandy bottle towards her, “where’s the need for you to go to the workhus or to chokey either—­you with a rich husband as is bound by law to support you as becomes a lady?  And, marm, mind another thing, a husband as hev wickedly deserted you—­which how he could do so it ain’t for me to say—­and is living along of another young party.”

She took some more brandy before she answered.

“That’s all very well, you duffer,” she said; “but how am I to get at him?  I tell you I’m afraid of him, and even if I weren’t, I haven’t a cent to travel with, and if I got there what am I to do?”

“As for being afeard, marm,” he answered, “I’ve told you Laryer Quest is a long sight more frightened of you than you are of him.  Then as for money, why, marm, I’m a-going down to Boisingham myself by the train as leaves Liverpool Street at half-past one, and that’s an hour and a bit from now, and it’s proud and pleased I should be to take a lady down and be the means of bringing them as has been in holy matrimony togither again.  And as to what you should do when you gets there, why, you should just walk up with your marriage lines and say, ’You are my lawful husband, and I calls on you to cease living as you didn’t oughter and to take me back;’ and if he don’t, why then you swears an information, and it’s a case of warrant for bigamy.”

The woman chuckled, and then suddenly seized with suspicion looked at her visitor sharply.

“What do you want me to blow the gaff for?” she said; “you’re a leery old hand, you are, for all your simple ways, and you’ve got some game on, I’ll take my davy.”