e that
is, and my fifty shall go along with it. I was always fond of
Matabel. But the child was only baptized to-day, and won't be old
enough to enjoy it for many years."

"In the meantime it can be laid out to its advantage," urged
Bideabout.

"I daresay," said Simon, "but I've nothin' to do with that, and
you've nothin' to do with that."

"Then who has?"

"Iver, of course."

"Iver!" The Broom-Squire turned livid as a corpse.

"You see," pursued the host, "Sanna said as how she wouldn't make
me trustee, I was too old, and I might be dead, or done something
terrible foolish, before the child came of age to take it on itself,
to use her very words. So she wouldn't make me trustee, but she
put it all into Iver's hands to hold for the little chap. She were
a won'erful shrewd woman were Sanna, and I've no doubt she was
right."

"Iver trustee--for my child!"

"Yes--why not?"

The Broom-Squire stood up, and without tasting the glass of punch
mixed for him, without a farewell to the landlord, went forth.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

MARKHAM.

The funeral of Mrs. Verstage was conducted with all the pomp and
circumstance that delight the rustic mind. Bideabout attended, and
his hat was adorned with a black silk weeper that was speedily
converted by Mehetabel, at his desire, into a Sunday waistcoat.

In this silk waistcoat he started on old Clutch one day for
Guildford, without informing his wife or sister whither he was bound.

The child was delicate and fretful, engaging most of its mother's
time and engrossing all her thought.

She had found an old cradle of oak, with a hood to it, the whole
quaintly and rudely carved, the rockers ending in snakes' heads,
in which several generations of Kinks had lain; in which, indeed,
Jonas had spent his early infancy, and had pleaded for his mother's
love and clamored for her attention. Whether with the thought of
amusing the child, or merely out of the overflow of motherly love
that seeks to adorn and glorify the babe, Mehetabel had picked the
few late flowers that lingered on in spite of frost, some pinched
chrysanthemums, a red robin that had withstood the cold, some twigs
of butcher's broom with blood-red berries that had defied it, and
these she had stuck about the cradle in little gimlet holes that
had been drilled round the edge, probably to contain pegs that might
hold down a cover, to screen out glaring sun or cutting draught.

Now, as Mehetabel rocked the crad