nished her, she had
quite so fine a surprise for him after she'd thought it all over and
collected herself.

"'Tis in a nutshell," she said. "All my life I've put you afore everything
on earth but my Maker, and I was minded so to continue. I've been
everything any daughter ever was to a father, and you have stood to me for
my waking and sleeping thought ever since I could think at all. And now
you want me to go under in my home and see another take my place. Well,
dad, that's your look-out, of course, and if you think Mrs. Bascombe will
be more useful to you than me, then take her. But I'll say here and now,
please, that if you be going to marry, I shall leave Wych Elm for good and
all, because I couldn't endure for another woman to be over me and closer
to your interests than what I am. Never, never could I endure it. Is that
quite clear?"

He looked at her and filled his tobacco pipe while he done so.

"So clear as can be, Jane," he said. "'Tis like your fine courage and
affection to feel so. But I make bold to believe you haven't weighed this
come-along-of-it same as I have, and find yourself getting up in the air
too soon. I could no more see Wych Elm without you than I could see myself
without you, and the affection I feel for Mrs. Bascombe is on a different
footing altogether. Love of a wife and love of a daughter don't clash at
all. They be different things, and she would no more come between me and
you and our lifelong devotion than love of man would come between you and
me."

He flowed on like that, so clever as need be, and she listened with a face
that didn't show a spark of the thought behind it. But he failed to move
her an inch, because, unknown to him, she'd got a fine trump card up her
sleeve, of course.

He saw presently that he wasn't making no progress and sighed a good bit
and turned on a pathetic note, which he had at command, and blew his nose
once or twice; but these little touches didn't move Jane, so he ventured
to ask her what her future ideas might be away from Wych Elm, if such a
fearful thing was thinkable.

"God, He knows," said John Warner, "as I never thought to be up against
life like this, and find myself called to choose by you, who was the apple
of my very eye, between a wife and an only child; but since you can have
the heart to come between me and a natural affection towards Mrs.
Bascombe, may I venture to ask, dear Jane, what your own plans might be if
you could bring yourse