the meal to get her guests to dance, but the cats tore the instrument open and made their nests and kittened among the strings, and the damp air rusted the wires. Then she bought a barrel-organ, and forced her husband to turn the handle in the corner and grind out the music for the dancers. However, on one occasion, having tasted too often a bottle within reach, though out of sight, he fell forward in the middle of a dance and brought the instrument down with him. The instrument was so broken that it could no longer be used. Mr. Darke died at last in one of the fits to which he was liable, having retired to rest by mistake under in place of on the bed.
By this time the lady had become very deaf.
On hearing the news of the decease some friends went to see her.
"Very grieved, madam, at your sad loss!"
"Ah! Bill is dead. He might have done worse; he might have lived. You will stop and dine, of course."
They had to tarry to see to matters of business. "Now, look here," said "Lady" Darke, "I'll have no more 'truck' with Bill. He has been trouble to me long enough. I shall send him to his friends in Plymouth. Let them bury him."
"Madam," said the nurse, "we want to lay him out. Will you give me a sheet?"
"A sheet! One of my good linen sheets! Not I. Take a pig-cloth"; that is to say, one in which bacon was salted. And actually her husband was laid in his coffin in one of these "pig-cloths."
In Mrs. Cudlip's novel, She Cometh Not, He Saith,
