If he
hadn't lost his mind he wasn't muck short of it.
One day he was visiting a neighbour who was dying and he prayed the Lord to have mercy on him because he was very poor and had worked so hard all his life that he
hadn't much time to attend to religion.
"No - it's not you." And it was as if, while her face hovered, he might have made out in it,
hadn't it been so near, some particular meaning blurred by a smile.
At the same time, if that awful night
hadn't changed everything, I should have behaved just like any other stupidly and properly brought-up young woman--waited and hoped and made an idiot of myself whenever you were around, and in the end, I suppose, been disappointed.
I have a great mind to say I wish I
hadn't. Then what would you have done, I should like to know?'
"It was to tell you not to be uneasy about us, be- cause we
hadn't got drownded."
"And I got you, Nancy, in spite of all; and yet I've been grumbling and uneasy because I
hadn't something else--as if I deserved it."
We
hadn't robbed nobody,
hadn't killed any people, but only just pre- tended.
If it
hadn't a-bin for his eyes I mightn't a-known him, with his beard and fat.
He looked as if he
hadn't had a meal for a week, and I
hadn't the heart to refuse him.
And think of the simple ways of this court: this wandering wench
hadn't any more trouble to get access to the king in his palace than she would have had to get into the poorhouse in my day and country.
But
hadn't her intuition been justified, after all, by the very man she had seen tonight?
