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No more was said on the matter. The next Saturday, after receiving his shilling, Mr. Geake knelt down without any hesitation. It was clear he wished this prayer to be a weekly institution, and an institution it became.

The women never knelt. Naomi, indeed, had never sanctioned the innovation, unless by her silence, and her mother assisted only with a very lugubrious “Amen,” being too weak to stir from her chair. As the months passed, it became evident to Geake that her strength would never come back. The fever had left her, apparently for good; but the rheumatism remained, and closed slowly upon the heart. The machine was worn out.

When the end came, Naomi had been doing the work single-handed for close upon twelve months. She could always get a plenty of work, and now took in a deal too much for her strength, to settle the doctor’s and undertaker’s bills, and buy herself a black gown, cape, and bonnet. The funeral, of course, took place on a Sunday. Geake, on the Saturday afternoon, knocked gently at Naomi’s door. His single intent was to speak a word or two of sympathy, if she would listen. Remembering her constant attitude under the Divine scourge, he felt a trifle nervous.

But there lay the shilling in the centre of the table, and there stood Naomi in a cloud of steam, hard at work on an immoderate pile of washing–even a man’s miscalculating eye could see that it was immoderate.

“I didn’t call–” he began, with a glance towards the shilling.

“No; I know you didn’t. But you may so well take it all the same.”

Geake had rehearsed a small speech, but found himself making out and signing the voucher as usual; and, as usual, when it was signed, he drew over a chair, and dropped on his knees. In prayer-meeting he was a great hand at “improving” an occasion of bereavement; but here again his will to speak impressively suddenly failed him. His words were:

“Lord, there were two women grinding at a mill; the one was taken, and t’other left. She that you took, you’ve a-carr’d beyond our prayers; but O, be gentle, be gentle, to her that’s left!”

He arose, and looked shyly, almost shamefacedly, at Naomi. She had not turned. But her head was bowed; and, drawing near, he saw that the scalding tears were falling fast into the wash-tub. She had not wept when her husband was lost, nor since.

“Go away!” she commanded, before he could speak, turning her shoulders resolutely towards him.

He took up his hat, and went out softly, closing the door softly behind him.

His eye, which was growing quick to read Naomi’s face, saw at once, as he entered the room a week later, that she deprecated even the slightest reference to her weakness. It also told him–he had not guessed it before–that her emotional breakdown had probably more to do with physical exhaustion than with any eloquence of his. The pile of washing had grown, and the woman’s face was grey with fatigue.

Geake, as he made out the voucher, cast about for a polite mode of hinting that this kind of thing must not go on. Nevertheless it was Naomi who began.

“Look here,” she said, as he put down the voucher; “there ain’t goin’ to be no more prayin’, eh?”

“Why, to be sure there is,” he answered with a show of great cheerfulness; and reached for a chair.

“I’d liefer you didn’t. I don’t want it. I don’t hold by any o’t. You’m very kind,” she went on, her voice trembling for an instant and then recovering its firmness, “and I reckon it soothed mother. But I reckon it don’t soothe me. I reckon it rubs me the wrong way. There’s times, when I hears a body prayin’, that I wishes we was Papists again and worshipped images, that I might throw stones at ’em!”

She paused, looked up into Geake’s devouring eyes, and added, with a poor attempt at a laugh: