She had been Ruth's nurse in her childhood, and having originally come from Slumberleigh, returned there when the Deyncourt children grew up, and lived happily ever after, with the very blind and entirely deaf old husband of her choice, in the gray stone lodge at Arleigh.
It was on her return from one of these almost daily visits that Mrs.
Eccles pounced on Ruth as she passed her gate, and under pretence of inquiring after Mrs.Cotton, informed her that she herself was suffering in no slight degree.

Ruth, who suddenly remembered that she had been remiss in "dropping in" on Mrs.Eccles of late, dropped in then and there to make up for past delinquencies.
"Is it rheumatism again ?" she asked, as Mrs.Eccles seemed inclined to run off at once into a report of the goings on of Widow Jones's Sally.
"Not that, my dear, so much as a sinking," said Mrs.Eccles, passing her hand slowly over what seemed more like a rising than a depression in her ample figure.

"But there! I've not been myself since the Lord took old Samiwell Price, and that's the truth." Samuel Price was the relation who had entered into rest off a ladder, and Ruth looked duly serious.
"I have no doubt it upset you very much," she said.
"Well, miss," returned Mrs.Eccles, with dignity, "it's not as if I'd had my 'ealth before.

I've had something wrong in the cistern" (Ruth wondered whether she meant system) "these many years.

From a gell I suffered in my inside.