Mr Hogarth's Will by Catherine Helen Spence

As Mrs. Peck sipped her brandy-and-water, putting a constraint on herself in so doing -- for her natural taste would have led her to swallow it in large gulps, but that would not have answered her purpose of impressing Mr. Dempster -- she began to talk of the letter she had received from Melbourne, which had distressed her so much. Her daughter was ill and dying, and her son-in-law had written to her to beg that if she possibly could she would come across to see poor dear Mary before she was no more; but, poor fellow, he was always hard up -- a decent well-meaning fellow he was -- but he wanted push, and things had never gone rightly with him.

"They have never had the doctor out of the house since they have been married, and many births and many deaths keep a man always poor, Mr. Dempster, as well you must know; and it's many's the five-pound note as I've given to them out of my small means to help them through at a hard pinch, and he thinks, of course, as how I can just put my hand in my pocket and pay my passage in the first steamer as quick as he thinks for to ask me; and so I would, and would never have begrudged it, for my poor Mary's sake, but things has gone so contrary with me and Peck for this year back that I ain't got a penny to lay out. And there's the poor soul laying so bad, and thinking as I'm on the road, I dare say, and me can no more get to her without wings nor she can to get me."