dn't tell, Mo--not to you--and it won't use
much of the candle to tell it. I'd be the easier for you to know, only
I'm not so quick as some at the telling of things." She seemed puzzled
how to begin.

Uncle Moses helped. "How long is it since you set eyes on him?"

"Twenty-five years--all of twenty-five years."

Uncle Mo was greatly relieved at hearing this. "Well, but,
M'riar--twenty-five years! You're shet of the beggar--clean shet of him!
You are _that_, old girl, legally and factually. But then," said he,
"when was you married to him?"

"I've got my lines to show for that, Mo. July six, eighteen
twenty-nine."

Uncle Mo repeated the date slowly after her, and then seemed to plunge
into a perplexing calculation, very distorting to the natural repose of
his face. Touching his finger-tips appeared to make his task easier.
After some effort, which ended without clear results, he said:--"What
I'm trying to make out is, how long was you and him keeping house?
Because it don't figure up. How long should you say?"

"We were together six weeks--no more."

"And you--you never seen him since?"

"Never since. Twenty-five years agone, this last July!" At which Uncle
Mo was so confounded that words failed him. His only resource was a long
whistle. Aunt M'riar, on the contrary, seemed to acquire narrative
powers from hearing her own voice, and continued:--"I hadn't known him a
twelvemonth, and I should have been wiser than to listen to him--at my
age, over one-and-twenty!"

"But you made him marry you, M'riar?"

"I did that, Mo. And I have the lines and my ring, to show it. But I
never told a soul, not even mother. I wouldn't have told her, to be
stopped--so bad I was!... What!--Dolly--Dolly's mother? Why, she was
just a young child, Dave's age!... How did I come to know him? It was
one day in the bar--he came in with Tom Spring, and ordered him a quart
of old Kennett. He was dressed like a gentleman, and free with his
money...."

"I knew old Tom Spring--he's only dead this two years past. I s'pose
that was The Tun, near by Piccadilly, I've heard you speak on."

"... That was where I see him, Mo, worse luck for the day! The One Tun
Inn. They called him the gentleman from Australia. He was for me and him
to go to Brighton by the coach, and find the Parson there. But I stopped
him at that, and we was married in London, quite regular, and we went to
Brighton, and then he took me to Doncaster, to be at the races. There's