t she had for the last seven years ever thought that Jack would ask
her to be his wife, but she would have been content to go on to the end
of her life as his first and dearest friend. Then she said at last,
"That's done with. Jack and I will always be great friends, but not as
we have been. Perhaps it is as well. Better now than ten years on."

Then her thoughts went to Harry, to whom, indeed, during the last few
years they had gone oftener than she would have admitted to herself. "He
is very faithful and kind and good, and I suppose one of these days I
shall have to give in. He will not expect much, but he deserves all I
could give him."

In after years, however, Nelly Shepherd learned that she could give her
husband very true and earnest love; and the headmaster and mistress of
the largest school at Wolverhampton are regarded by all who know them,
and by none less than by Jack Simpson and his wife, as a perfectly happy
couple.

It is ten years since Jack married Alice Merton, who had loved him for
years before he asked her to be his wife. Jack is now part proprietor of
the Vaughan pit, and is still its real manager, although he has a
nominal manager under him. He cannot, however, be always on the spot, as
he lives near Birmingham, and is one of the greatest authorities on
mining, and the first consulting engineer, in the Black Country. At Mr.
Brook's death he will be sole proprietor of the Vaughan, that gentleman
having at Jack's marriage settled its reversion upon his wife.

Dinner is over, and he is sitting in the garden, surrounded by those he
most cares for in the world. It is the 1st of June, a day upon which a
small party always assembles at his house. By his side is his wife, and
next to her are Harry Shepherd and Nelly. Between the ladies a warm
friendship has sprung up of late years, while that between the three
friends has never diminished in the slightest. On Jack's other hand sits
an artist, bearing one of the most honoured names in England, whose
health Jack always proposes at this dinner as "the founder of his
fortune." Next to the artist sits Mr. Brook, and beyond him Mrs.
Simpson's father, a permanent resident in the house now, but some years
back a professor of mathematics in Birmingham. Playing in the garden are
six children, two of whom call the young Simpsons cousins, although
there is no blood relationship between them; and walking with them are
an old couple, who live in the pretty cottage ju