That if it was master's wishes as she and him
should part, it was best they should part, and she hoped he might be
the happier for it, and always wished him well, and that he might find
somebody as would meet his dispositions. It would be a hard trial, she
said, to part from such a missis, but she could meet any suffering when
her conscience told her she was in the rights, and therefore she was
willing even to go that lengths. She did not think, she added, that she
could long survive the separations, but, as she was hated and looked
upon unpleasant, perhaps her dying as soon as possible would be the best
endings for all parties. With this affecting conclusion, Miss Miggs shed
more tears, and sobbed abundantly.
'Can you bear this, Varden?' said his wife in a solemn voice, laying
down her knife and fork.
'Why, not very well, my dear,' rejoined the locksmith, 'but I try to
keep my temper.'
'Don't let there be words on my account, mim,' sobbed Miggs. 'It's much
the best that we should part. I wouldn't stay--oh, gracious me!--and
make dissensions, not for a annual gold mine, and found in tea and
sugar.'
Lest the reader should be at any loss to discover the cause of Miss
Miggs's deep emotion, it may be whispered apart that, happening to
be listening, as her custom sometimes was, when Gabriel and his wife
conversed together, she had heard the locksmith's joke relative to the
foreign black who played the tambourine, and bursting with the spiteful
feelings which the taunt awoke in her fair breast, exploded in the
manner we have witnessed.
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