o conceal.
Everybody knew, or seemed to know, all about everybody else's business.
There were no bye-roads or corners in Weircombe. There was only one way
out,--to the sea. Height at the one end,--width and depth at the other.
It seemed useless to have any secrets. He, David Helmsley, felt himself
to be singular and apart, in that he had his own hidden mystery. He
often found himself getting restless under the quiet observation of Mr.
Bunce's eye, yet Mr. Bunce had no suspicions of him whatever. Mr. Bunce
merely watched him "professionally," and with the kindest intention. In
fact, he and Bunce became great friends. Bunce had entirely accepted the
story he told about himself to the effect that he had once been "in an
office in the city," and looked upon him as a superannuated bank clerk,
too old to be kept on in his former line of business. Questions that
were put to him respecting his "late friend, James Deane," he answered
with apparent good faith by saying that it was a long time since he had
seen him, and that it was only as a "last forlorn hope" that he had set
out to try and find him, "as he had always been helpful to those in
need." Mary herself wished that this little fiction of her "father's
friend" should be taken as fact by all the village, and a curious part
of her character was that she never sought to ask Helmsley privately,
for her own enlightenment, anything of his history. She seemed content
to accept him as an old and infirm man, who must be taken care of simply
because he was old and infirm, without further question or argument.
Bunce was always very stedfast in his praise of her.

"She ought--yes--she ought possibly to have married,--" he said, in his
slow, reflective way--"She would have made a good wife, and a still
better mother. But an all-wise Providence has a remarkable habit--yes, I
think we may call it quite a remarkable habit!--of persuading men
generally to choose thriftless and flighty women for their wives, and to
leave the capable ones single. That is so. Or in Miss Deane's case it
may be an illustration of the statement that 'Mary hath chosen the
better part.' Certainly when either men or women are happy in a state of
single blessedness, a reference to the Seventh Chapter of the Epistle of
St. Paul to the Corinthians, will strengthen their minds and
considerably assist them to remain in that condition."

Thus Bunce would express himself, with a weighty air as of having given
some vastl