listen.

'Oh, never mind all that now, Jack,' she says, with arms round his
neck. 'What does it matter about a silly joke now that I have got
you, and it's all right betwixt us?'

I thought it my duty to go straight home and tell uncle she was up
in the church, kissing and cuddling with Jack Halibut; and he took
his stick and started off after her.

But he met them at the garden gate, and Jack, he came forward, and
he says--

'Mr. Kenworthy, I have had hard thoughts of you this three year, but
I see you was right, for if I had never gone away, I should never
have been able to keep my little girl as she should be kept, and as
I can now, thanks be! and I should never have known how dear she has
loved me this three year.'

And uncle, like the soft-hearted old thing he is, he holds out his
hands, and he says, 'God bless you, my boy, it was for your own good
and hers.'

And they went in to supper.

As for me, I went to bed. I had had all the supper I wanted. And
uncle has never been the same to me since, though I'm sure I tried
to act for the best.

GUILTY

IT was my first place and my last, and I don't think we should have
got on in business as we have if it hadn't been for me being for six
or seven years with one of the first families in the county. Though
only a housemaid, you can't help learning something of their ways.
At any rate, you learn what gentlefolks like, and what they can't
abide. But the worst of being housemaid where there's a lot of
servants kept is, that one or other or all of the men-servants is
sure to be wanting to keep company with you. They have nothing else
to do in their spare time, and I suppose it's handy having your
sweetheart living in the house. It doesn't give you so much trouble
with going out in the evening, if not fine.

The coachman was promised to the cook, which, I believe, often takes
place. Tim, the head groom, was a very nice, genteel fellow, and I
daresay I might have taken up with him, if I hadn't met with my
James, though never with John, who was the plague of my life. To
begin with, he had a black whisker, that I couldn't bear to look at,
let alone putting one's face against it, as I should have had to
have done when married, no doubt. And he had a roving black eye,
very yellowy in the white of it, and hair that looked all black and
bear's-greasy, though he always said he never put anything on it
except a little bay rum in moderation.

They tell me I was