Three months after
she came to Wortley Manor, she was Stephen Dane's wife.
"That marriage was the beginning of all the trouble, Mollie. They left
the farm, this young pair, and set up a public-house. A public suited
Mary Dane to the life. She flaunted in gay dresses and bright ribbons,
and gossiped over the bar with the customers, and had all the news of
the place put at her tongue's end. And Stephen, he took to drink--a
little, at first, to be jovial with the customers; more and more
gradually, until, at the end of the honey-moon, he was half his time
on the fuddle. And Mary Dane didn't care. She laughed in her pretty
way when people talked.
"'Let him take his glass, Mariam,' says she to me. 'He's fonder of me in
his cups, and better-natured every way, than when he's sober. As long as
my man doesn't beat me and pull the house about our heads, I'll never
say him nay.'
"It was near the end of the second month that a sick traveler stopped
at the Wortley Arms--so they called the inn--and lay very ill there for
weeks and weeks. He had taken cold and got a fever, and he was very
poorly and like to die.
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