you before he goes. It's typhoid fever,
but that's over now; he's dying of weakness, they say.'

And when we asked the young man's name, of course it was Bill
Jarvis. So we left my Pretty in charge of the barge, and my old man
and me, we went up to the hospital.

Bill was so changed you wouldn't 'ardly 'ave known 'im. From being a
fleshy, red-cheeked young fellow, he'd come to be as thin as a
skeleton, and 'is eyes seemed to fill half 'is face.

'I want to marry Mary,' says 'e. 'I'm dying, I can't do her and the
kid no 'arm now, and I should die easier if she'd marry me here; the
chaplain would do it--he said so.'

My old man didn't say nothin', but says I, 'I would dearly like her
to be made an honest woman of.'

'It's me that wants to be made an honest man of,' says Bill. And
with that my old man, he took his hand and shook it. Then says Bill
with the tears runnin' down his cheeks,--partly from weakness, I
suppose, for 'e wasn't the crying sort--'So help me God, I never
knew what a beast I was till that day I come to you in your barge
and you showed me what a man was, Tom Allbutt; you did, so, and I've
been trying to be a man ever since, and I've given up the drink, and
I've lived steady, and I've never so much as looked at another girl
since that night. Oh, get her to be my wife,' says 'e, 'and let me
die easy.'

And I went and fetched 'er, and she came along with me with the
child in her arms; and the chaplain married them then and there. I
don't know how it was the banns didn't have to be put up, but it was
managed somehow.

'And you'll stay with me till I die,' says 'e, 'won't you, Mary, you
and the kid?'

But he didn't die, he got better, and there isn't a couple happier
than him and Mary, for all they've gone through.

And the doctor says it was Mary saved his life, for it was after he
had had a little talk with her that he took a turn for the better.

'Mary,' says 'e, 'I've been a bad lot, and you was in the right when
you called me a coward and a beast; but your father showed me what a
man was, and I've tried to be a man. You was fond of me once, Mary;
you'll love me a little when I'm gone, and don't let the kid think
unkind of her daddy.'

'Love you when you're gone?' says she, cryin' all over 'er face, and
kissin' 'im as if it was for a wager; 'you ain't a-goin' to die,
you're goin' to live along of me and baby. Love you when you're
gone?' says she, 'why, I've loved you all the time!' she says