tle baby of our own, and then I knew as
I hadn't known what 'appiness was before. She was such a pretty
little thing, with yellow hair, soft and fluffy all over her head,
the colour of a new-hatched duck, and blue eyes and dear little
hands that I used to kiss a thousand times a day.

My mother had married beneath her, they said, for she'd been to
school and been in service in a good family, and she taught me to
read and write and cipher in the old days, when I was a little kid
along of 'er in the barge. So we named our little kid Mary to be
like our boat, and as soon as she was big enough, I taught 'er all
my mother had taught me, and when she was about eight year old my
Tom's great-uncle James, who was a tinsmith by trade, left us a bit
of money--over L 200 it were.

'Not a penny of it shall I spend,' says my Tom when he heard of it;
'we'll send our Mary to school with that, we will; and happen she'll
be a lady's-maid and get on in the world.'

So we put her to boarding-school in Maidstone, and it was like
tearing the heart out of my body. And she'd been away from us a
fortnight, and the barge was like hell without her, Tom said, and I
felt it too though I couldn't say it, being a Christian woman; and
one night we'd got the barge fast till morning in Stoneham Lock, and
we were a-settin' talking about her.

'Don't you fret, old woman,' says Tom, with the tears standin' in
his eyes, 'she's better off where she is, and she'll thank us for it
some day. She's 'appier where she is,' says 'e, 'nor she would be in
this dirty old barge along of us.'

And just as he said it, I says, ''Ark! what's that?' And we both
listened, and if it wasn't that precious child standing on the bank
callin' 'Daddy,' and she'd run all the way from Maidstone in 'er
little nightgown, and a waterproof over it.

P'raps if we'd been sensible parents, we should 'ave smacked 'er and
put 'er back next day; but as it was we hugged 'er, and we hugged
each other till we was all out o' breath, and then she set up on 'er
daddy's knee, and 'ad a bit o' cold pork and a glass of ale for 'er
supper along of us, and there was no more talk of sendin' 'er back
to school. But we put by the bit of money to set 'er up if she
should marry or want to go into business some day.

And she lived with us on the barge, and though I ses it there wasn't
a sweeter girl nor a better girl atwixt London and Tonbridge.

When she was risin' seventeen, I looked for the young