another I asked after him and his girl and hoped Minnie was being a kindly
daughter to him and so on. But he didn't speak very fatherly of her.

"She's a melancholy cat in a house," he said, "and women will be
melancholy in her stage of life. She's terrible wishful to leave me and
find a husband--so set on it as yourself--but of course with no chance
whatsoever; for no self-respecting man would ever look at a creature like
her. As a rule, with her pattern, they have got sense enough to give up
hope and take what Nature sends 'em in a patient spirit. But not Minnie.
Hope won't die and, in a word, she's a plaguey piece and she's got a sharp
tongue too, and when I'm too old to hold my own she'll give me hell."

"Why don't she go into one of them institutions?" I asked, "There's plenty
of places where good work is being done by ugly, large-hearted women,
looking after natural childer, or nursing rich folk, and so on. Then she'd
be helping the world along and forget herself and lay up treasure where
moth and rust don't corrupt."

"You ax her," answered Arthur. "You give her a hint. I'd pay good money to
man or woman who could tempt her away from looking after me. And if she
thought I was minded to take another wife, I'd get the ugly edge of her
tongue up home to my vitals, so us must watch out."

"Don't you let her in the secret, however," I prayed the man, "because if
she knew she'd spoil all."

"Fear nothing," he answered; "I can take her measure."

But unfortunately for all concerned, Arthur over-praised himself in that
matter, and before a fortnight was told, while we developed our little
affair very clever, and I smiled on Arthur in the street afore neighbours,
and now and again he invited himself to tea--if Minnie didn't dash in and
put the lid on! What I felt I can't write down in any case now, things
happening as they did after; but at the time, I'd have wrung the woman's
neck for a ha'porth of peas. But she thought she knew the circumstances,
and being filled with hateful rage that her father was thinking on
another, she struck in the only quarter that mattered and, before I knowed
it, I was a lone woman and hope dead.

A good bit happened first, however, and Arthur played up very clever
indeed. He'd come along and pass the time of day and I'd look in his
cottage to give an opinion on some trifle; and when he came to a tea on
which I'd spent a tidy lot of thought, he enjoyed it so much and welcomed
the strengt