You'll have a case of meningitis and delirium tremens instead.' 'Ah,' said Mr.Pilgrim, 'he can hardly stand it much longer at the rate he's going on, one would think.

He's been confoundedly cut up about that business of Armstrong's, I fancy.

It may do him some harm, perhaps, but Dempster must have feathered his nest pretty well; he can afford to lose a little business.' 'His business will outlast him, that's pretty clear,' said Pratt; 'he'll run down like a watch with a broken spring one of these days.' Another prognostic of evil to Dempster came at the beginning of March.
For then little 'Mamsey' died--died suddenly.

The housemaid found her seated motionless in her arm-chair, her knitting fallen down, and the tortoise-shell cat reposing on it unreproved.

The little white old woman had ended her wintry age of patient sorrow, believing to the last that 'Robert might have been a good husband as he had been a good son.' When the earth was thrown on Mamsey's coffin, and the son, in crape scarf and hatband, turned away homeward, his good angel, lingering with outstretched wing on the edge of the grave, cast one despairing look after him, and took flight for ever..