l drink hisself to
death." I e'en a'most told him outright what foolishness he was enterin'
into, but he knowed it--he knowed it--because he said next time the man
come 'twould be fifteen shillin's. An' next time 'twas. Just fifteen
shillin's!'

'An' _was_ the man her father?' asked Jabez.

'He had the proofs an' the papers. Jim showed me what that Lunnon
Childern's Society had answered when Mary writ up to 'em an' taxed 'em
with it. I lay she hadn't been proper polite in her letters to 'em, for
they answered middlin' short. They said the matter was out o' their
hands, but--let's see if I remember--oh, yes,--they ree-gretted there
had been an oversight. I reckon they had sent Mary out in the candle-box
as a orphan instead o' havin' a father. Terrible awkward! Then, when
he'd drinked up the money, the man come again--in his usuals--an' he
kept hammerin' on and hammerin' on about his duty to his pore dear wife,
an' what he'd do for his dear daughter in Lunnon, till the tears runned
down his two dirty cheeks an' he come away with more money. Jim used to
slip it into his hand behind the door; but his mother she heard the
chink. She didn't hold with hush-money. She'd write out all her feelin's
on the slate, an' Jim 'ud be settin' up half the night answerin' back
an' showing that the man had the law with him.'

'Hadn't that man no trade nor business, then?'

'He told me he was a printer. I reckon, though, he lived on the rates
like the rest of 'em up there in Lunnon.'

'An' how did Mary take it?'

'She said she'd sooner go into service than go with the man. I reckon a
mistress 'ud be middlin' put to it for a maid 'fore she put Mary into
cap an' gown. She was studyin' to be a schoo-ool-teacher. A beauty
she'll make!... Well, that was how things went that fall. Mary's Lunnon
father kep' comin' an' comin' 'carden as he'd drinked out the money Jim
gave him; an' each time he'd put-up his price for not takin' Mary away.
Jim's mother, she didn't like partin' with no money, an' bein' obliged
to write her feelin's on the slate instead o' givin' 'em vent by mouth,
she was just about mad. Just about she _was_ mad!

'Come November, I lodged with Jim in the outside room over 'gainst his
hen-house. I paid _her_ my rent. I was workin' for Dockett at
Pounds--gettin' chestnut-bats out o' Perry Shaw. Just such weather as
this be--rain atop o' rain after a wet October. (An' I remember it ended
in dry frostes right away up to Christmas.)