e a good man!'

'It's more than you are, then, you devil,' says Tom. 'Get along, out
of my sight,' says 'e, 'before I think better of it.'

And that soldier was off that barge before you could say 'knife,'
and we didn't see no more of 'im.

But we was up at Hamsted Lock the next summer. The baby was
beginnin' to toddle about now; we'd called her Bessie for me. She
and her mother was a-settin' in the meadow pickin' the daisies, when
I see a soldier a-comin' along the meadow-path, and if it wasn't
that Bill Jarvis again. He stopped short when he saw my Pretty.

'Well, Mary?' says 'e.

'Well, Bill?' says she.

'Is that my kid?' says 'e.

'Whose else's would it be?' says she, flashing up at him; 'ain't it
enough to deceive a girl, and desert her, without throwing mud in
her face on the top of it all? Whose else's should the child be but
yours?'

'Go easy,' says Bill, 'I didn't mean that, my girl. Look 'ere, says
'e, 'I got out of that scrape, thanks to your father, and I want to
let bygones be bygones, and I'll marry you to-morrow, if you like,
and be a father to the kid.'

Then Mary, she stood up on her feet, with the little one in 'er
arms.

'Marry you!' says she, 'I wouldn't marry you if you was the only man
in the world. Me marry a man as could serve a girl as you served me?
Not if it was to save me from hanging? Me give the kid a father like
you? Thank God, the child's my own, and you can't touch it. I tell
you,' says she, 'shame and all, I'd rather have things as they are,
than have married you in church and 'ave found out afterwards what a
cowardly beast you are.'

And with that she walks past 'im, looking like a queen, and down
into her cabin; and 'e was left a-standin' there sucking the end of
his stick and looking like a fool.

'I think, perhaps,' says I afterwards, 'you ought to 'ave let 'im
make an honest woman of you.'

'I'm as honest as I want to be,' says she, 'and the child is all my
own now.' So no more was said.

And things went on the same old sleepy way, like they always do on
the river, and we forgot the shame almost, in the pleasure of having
the little thing about us. And so the time went on, till one day at
Maidstone a Sister of Charity with one of those white caps and a big
cross round her neck, come down to the water's side inquiring for
Tom Allbutt.

'That's me,' says my old man.

'There's a young man ill in hospital,' says she. 'He's dying, I'm
afraid, and he wants to see