Margaret turned round to walk alongside of the girl in her feeble progress homeward. But for a minute or two she did not speak. At last she said in a low voice,
"Bessy, do you wish to die?" For she shrank from death herself, with all the clinging to life so natural to the young and healthy.
Bessy was silent in her turn for a minute or two. Then she replied,
"If yo'd led the life I have, and getten as weary of it as I have, and thought at times, 'maybe it'll last for fifty or sixty years--it does wi' some,'--and got dizzy and dazed, and sick, as each of them sixty years seemed to spin about me, and mock me with its length of hours and minutes, and endless bits o' time--oh, wench! I tell thee thou'd been glad enough when th' doctor said he feared thou'd never see another winter."
"Why, Bessy, what kind of a life has yours been?"

Margaret turned silently to walk alongside the girl in her feeble progress homeward. At last she said in a low voice,
'Bessy, do you wish to die?'
Bessy was silent in her turn for a minute or two. Then she replied,
'If yo'd led the life I have, and getten as weary of it as I have, and thought "maybe it'll last for fifty or sixty years," and got dizzy and sick, as each of them sixty years seemed to spin about me, and mock me with its endless time - oh, wench! Thou'd been glad enough when th' doctor said he feared thou'd never see another winter.'
'Why, Bessy, what kind of a life has yours been?'
