r shall know to my dying day what kept
him off me. A man of good qualities too, but a proper slave to the habit
of caution, and though I'd be the last to undervalue the virtue which
never was wanted more than now, yet, when the coast lies clear and the
sun's shining and the goal in sight, and that goal me, 'twas a depressing
thing for the man to hold back without any sane reason for so doing.

Being, as you may say, the centre of the story, for Milly Parable and my
son, Rupert, though they bulk large in the tale, be less than me, it's
difficult to set it out. And the affair itself growed into such a proper
tangle at the finish that my pen may fail afore the end; but I'll stick so
near as memory serves me to the facts, and, though others may not shine
too bright afore I finish, the tale won't cast no discredit upon me in any
fairminded ear.

I married at twenty and had four children and they was grown up, all but
Albert, before I lost John Stocks, my first husband. Albert, top flower of
the basket, he died as a bright child of ten year old. His brain was too
big for his head and expanded and killed him. And that left Jane, my
first, married to Ford, the baker, and John, called after his father, and
known to me as 'Mother's Joy,' and Rupert, who got to be called 'Mother's
Misfortune,' because he was a shifty and tolerable wicked boy with lawless
manners and no thought for any living creature but self. John was good as
gold, but a thought simple. He married and had five childer in four years
and never knew where to turn for a penny. But the good will and big heart
of the man was always there, and if he could have helped his parents and
come by money honest, he'd have certainly done it. A glutton for work and
in church twice every Sunday; but his work was hedge-tacking and odd jobs,
and he never done either in a way to get any lasting fame. I wouldn't say
I was proud of him, and yet I knew he went straight and done his duty to
the best of his poor powers. His wife was such another--the salt of the
earth in a manner of speaking, if rightly understood, but no knack of
making her mark in the world--in fact a very godly, unnoticeable, unlucky
fashion of woman. I knew they'd be rewarded hereafter, where brains be
dust in the balance, but meantime I'd sometimes turn to mark Rupert
flourishing like the green bay tree and making money and putting it away
and biding single and keeping his secrets close as the grave.

I never saw no