le sure you can help, and it looks as if it would be all right and
regular and suit everybody if she was to take me and leave the coast clear
for you when you wed her parent."

"It does look like that to a plain sight," admitted Nelly, "but in truth
things be very different. And for your confidence, in strict secrecy, I
can give you mine. Warner don't want her to go. He badly wants me and her
both, while, for her part, she don't want to go and hates the thought;
but, so far, she's determined to do so if I come."

"That ain't love, however," argued Mr. Ball.

"It ain't," admitted Nelly Bascombe, "and you mustn't fox yourself to
think she'll come to you for love. A good helper she'd be to any man in
her own way; but she belongs to the order of women who can't love very
grand as a wife. She do love as a daughter can love a father, however, and
it's very clear to me that John Warner is her life in a manner of
speaking. On the other hand, it would upset her existence to the very
roots if I went to Wych Elm at farmer's right hand, where naturally I
should be."

Mr. Ball listened and nodded, and his blue eyes rested upon Mrs.
Bascombe's grey ones.

"You throw a great light," he said. "In a word, there was deeper reasons
far than any growing affection for me that have made her so on-coming of
late?"

"God forbid as I should suggest such a thing as that," answered Nelly.
"You're a sort of man to please any woman, if I may say so; but I'm only
telling you what lies in her mind. And I'll say more in fairness to the
both of you. Her father don't believe there is a man after her at all.
Jane's just sitting on the fence, in fact, and waiting to see if she can't
shake him off me. And if I'm turned down, then you'll be turned down. 'Tis
rather amusing in a way."

"It may be, but I ain't much one for a joke," he confessed, and then went
on. "Though too busy for love-making and all that, yet I've got my pride,
Mrs. Bascombe, and I shouldn't like to be taken as a last resort--amusing
though it might be."

"No man would," she answered. "And I hope I'm wrong. She may be turning to
you for your qualities. She may be coming for affection after all, knowing
you'd prove a very fine husband."

"I would," declared Mr. Ball. "I can tell you, without self-conceit or any
such thing, that where I loved I'd stick, and the woman as shared my life
would share my all. There's a lot in me only hid because nothing have yet
happened to draw it ou