He's earning good money, thirty shillings a week;
he's as good a young man as ever stepped--religious, kind-hearted,
everything as would make a woman 'appy in 'er 'ome. It is 'ard for a girl
to keep up with 'er religion in some of the situations we have to put up
with, and I'd mostly got out of the habit of chapel-going till I met him;
it was 'e who led me back again to Christ. But for all that, understanding
very well, not to say indulgent for the failings of others, like yourself,
miss. He knew all about Jackie from the first, and never said nothing
about it, but that I must have suffered cruel, which I have. He's been
with me to see Jackie, and they both took to each other wonderful like; it
couldn't 'ave been more so if 'e'd been 'is own father. But now all that's
broke up, for when Fred meets William it is as likely as not as he'll
think quite different."
The evening died behind the red-brick suburb, and Miss Rice's strip of
garden grew greener. She had finished her dinner, and she leaned back
thinking of the story she had heard. She was one of those secluded maiden
ladies so common in England, whose experience of life is limited to a tea
party, and whose further knowledge of life is derived from the
yellow-backed French novels which fill their bookcases.
"How was it that you happened to meet William--I think you said his name
was William?"
"It was the day, miss, that I went to fetch the beer from the
public-house.
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