"Don't be too hard on the pore soul, Miss Hester," returned Mrs. Davis. "She had a hard time of it. I knowed Margar't when she was n't so low down as in her last days."
"She ought n't never to 'a' left her husband."
"Oh, ef you'd 'a' knowed him as I did, Miss Hester, you would n't never say that. He was a brute: sich beatin's as he used to give her when he was in liquor you never heerd tell of."
"That was hard, but as long as he was a husband he was a protection to her name."
"True enough. Protection is a good dish, but a beatin's a purty bitter sauce to take with it."
"I wonder what's ever become of Brent." "Lord knows. No one 'ain't heerd hide ner hair o' him sence he went away from town. People thought that he was a-hangin' around tryin' to git a chance to kill Mag after she got her divorce from him, but all at once he packed off without sayin' a word to anybody. I guess he's drunk himself to death by this time."
When they had finished with Margaret, the women set to work to clean up the house.
