ht home to William's mother, and we told
her all about it; and we was cried in church next Sunday, and I
stayed with the old lady until we was married, and many a year
after; and a good mother she was to me, though only in law, and a
good granny to our children when they come. And I wasn't so unhappy
as you may think, because mother come to see me directly, and she
was at our wedding; and father, he didn't say anything to prevent
her going.

When I was churched after my first, and the boy was christened--in
our own church, for I had made William promise it should be so if
ever we had any--mother was there, and she said to me: 'Take the
child,' she said, 'and go to your father at home; and when he sees
the child, he'll come round, I'll lay a crown; for his bark,' she
says, 'was allus worse than his bite.'

And I did so, and the pears was hard and red on the wall as they was
the night William climbed up to my window, and I went into the
kitchen, and there was father sitting in his big chair, and the
Bible on the table in front of him, with his spectacles; but he
wasn't reading, and if it had been any one else but father, I should
have said he had been crying. And so I went in, and I showed him the
baby, and I said--

'Look, father, here's our little baby; and he's named James, for
you, father, and christened in church the same as I was. And now I
have got a child of my own,' says I, for he didn't speak, 'dear
father, I know what it is to have a child of your own go against
your wishes, and please God mine never will--or against yours
either. But I couldn't help it, and O father, do forgive me!'

And he didn't say anything, but he kissed the boy, and he kissed him
again. And presently he says--

'It's 'most time your mother was home from church. Won't you be
setting the tea, Kate?'

So I give him the baby to hold, for I knew everything was all right
betwixt us.

And all the children have been christened in the church. But I think
when father is taken from us--which in the nature of things he must
be, though long may it be first!--I think I shall be a Roman
Catholic too; for it doesn't seem to me to matter much one way or
the other, and it would please William very much, and I am sure it
wouldn't hurt me. And what's the good of being married to the best
man in the world if you can't do a little thing like that to please
him?

A DEATH-BED CONFESSION

AND so you think I shall go to heaven when I die, sir