you say may be
used against you.'

'Used against a fiddlestick end!' said Mrs. Blake. 'I married Robert
Sigglesfield in the name of William Alderton, and he sitting
trembling there, like a shrimp half boiled! He got ready the kind of
will we wanted instead of the one the old man meant, and gave it to
the old man to sign, and he signed it right enough.'

'And what about that arsenic,' says I,--'that arsenic I found in
your corner cupboard?'

'Oh, it was you took it, was it? You little silly, my neck's too
handsome for me to do anything to put a rope round it. Do you
suppose I've kept my complexion to my age with nothing but cold
water, you little cat?'

'And the other will,' says Harry, 'that my father meant to sign?'

'I'll get you that,' says Mrs. Blake. 'It's no use bearing malice
now all's said and done.'

And she goes upstairs to get it, and, if you'll believe me, we were
fools enough to let her go; and we waited like lambs for her to come
back, which being a woman with her wits about her, and no fool, she
naturally never did; and by the time we had woke up to our seven
senses, she was far enough away, and we never saw her again. We
didn't try too much. But we had the law of that Sigglesfield, and it
was fourteen years' penal.

And the will was never found--I expect Mrs. Blake had burnt it,--so
the farm came to John, and what else there was to Harry, according
to the terms of the will the old man had made when his wife was
alive, afore John had joined the force. And Harry and John was that
pleased to be together again that they couldn't make up their minds
to part; so they farm the place together to this day.

And if Harry has prospered, and John too, it's no more than they
deserve, and a blessing on brotherly love, as mother says. And if my
dear children are the finest anywhere on the South Downs, that's by
the blessing of God too, I suppose, and it doesn't become me to say
so.

ACTING FOR THE BEST

I HAVE no patience with people who talk that kind of nonsense about
marrying for love and the like. For my part I don't know what they
mean, and I don't believe they know it themselves. It's only a sort
of fashion of talking. I never could see what there was to like in
one young man more than another, only, of course, you might favour
some more than others if they was better to do.

My cousin Mattie was different. She must set up to be in love, and
walk home from church with Jack Halibut Sunday a