farmer's knee.

"You've got a jewel in that gal, brother William John."

"Eh! she's a good enough lass. Not much of a manager, brother Tony. Too
much of a thinker, I reckon. She's got a temper of her own too. I'm a
bit hurt, brother Tony, about that other girl. She must leave London, if
she don't alter. It's flightiness; that's all. You mustn't think ill of
poor Dahly. She was always the pretty one, and when they know it, they
act up to it: she was her mother's favourite."

"Ah! poor Susan! an upright woman before the Lord."

"She was," said the farmer, bowing his head.

"And a good wife," Anthony interjected.

"None better--never a better; and I wish she was living to look after
her girls."

"I came through the churchyard, hard by," said Anthony; "and I read that
writing on her tombstone. It went like a choke in my throat. The first
person I saw next was her child, this young gal you call Rhoda; and,
thinks I to myself, you might ask me, I'd do anything for ye--that I
could, of course."

The farmer's eye had lit up, but became overshadowed by the
characteristic reservation.

"Nobody'd ask you to do more than you could," he remarked, rather
coldly.

"It'll never be much," sighed Anthony.

"Well, the world's nothing, if you come to look at it close," the farmer
adopted a similar tone.

"What's money!" said Anthony.

The farmer immediately resumed his this-worldliness:

"Well, it's fine to go about asking us poor devils to answer ye that,"
he said, and chuckled, conceiving that he had nailed Anthony down to a
partial confession of his ownership of some worldly goods.

"What do you call having money?" observed the latter, clearly in the
trap. "Fifty thousand?"

"Whew!" went the farmer, as at a big draught of powerful stuff.

"Ten thousand?"

Mr. Fleming took this second gulp almost contemptuously, but still
kindly.

"Come," quoth Anthony, "ten thousand's not so mean, you know. You're a
gentleman on ten thousand. So, on five. I'll tell ye, many a gentleman'd
be glad to own it. Lor' bless you! But, you know nothing of the world,
brother William John. Some of 'em haven't one--ain't so rich as you!"

"Or you, brother Tony?" The farmer made a grasp at his will-o'-the-wisp.

"Oh! me!" Anthony sniggered. "I'm a scraper of odds and ends. I pick up
things in the gutter. Mind you, those Jews ain't such fools, though
a curse is on 'em, to wander forth. They know the meaning of the
multiplication table. The