the Phoenix
and Bands of Hope rolled into one. He never touched a drop of drink
since that day, and Jenny's as happy as her kind ever is. I hear she
didn't fret over me more than a month, though perhaps that's only
what I deserved, writing to her as I did. And then Amelia she
said--'No such harm done then after all.' So she married me.

Now, you see, if I'd listened to Satan and hadn't pulled Wheeler
out, I shouldn't have got burned, and I shouldn't have got into the
hospital, and I shouldn't have found Amelia again, and then where
should I have been? Whereas now, we're farming the same bit of land
that my father farmed before us. And if this was a made-up story,
Amelia would have had to drowned herself or something, and I should
have gone a-weeping and a-wailing for Jenny all my born days; but as
it's true and really happened, Amelia and me have been punished
enough, I think; for eight years of unhappiness is only a few words
of print in a story-book, but when you've got to live them, every
day of them, eight years is eight years, as Amelia and I shall
remember till our dying day; and eight years unhappiness is enough
punishment for most of the wrong things a man can do, or a woman
either for that matter.

COALS OF FIRE

ALL my life I've lived on a barge. My father, he worked a barge from
London to Tonbridge, and 'twas on a barge I first see the light when
my mother's time come. I used to wish sometimes as I could 'ave
lived in a cottage with a few bits of flowers in the front, but I
think if I'd been put to it I should have chose the barge rather
than the finest cottage ever I see. When I come to be grown up and
took a husband of my own it was a bargeman I took, of course. He was
a good sort always, was my Tom, though not particular about Sundays
and churchgoings and such like, as my father always was. It used to
be a sorrow to me in my young married days to think as Tom was so
far from the Lord, and I used to pray that 'is eyes might be opened
and that 'e might be led to know the truth like me, which was vanity
on my part, for I've come to see since that like as not 'e was
nearer the Lord nor ever I was.

We worked the William and Mary, did Tom and me, and I used to think
no one could be 'appier than we was them first two years. Tom was as
kind as kind, and never said a hard word to me except when he was in
liquor; and as to liftin' his 'and to me, no, never in his life. But
after two years we got a lit