to set before neighbours, I do assure you.'

'"Why, 'twas half full last week, mother," he ses. "You don't mean," he
ses, "you've given him all that as well? It's two shillin's worth," he
ses. (That's how I knowed he paid four.) "Well, well, mother, you be too
tender-'carted to live. But I don't grudge it to him," he ses. "I don't
grudge him nothin' he can keep." So, 'cardenly, we drinked up what
little sup was left.'

'An' what come to Mary's Lunnon father?' said Jabez after a full
minute's silence.

'I be too tired to go readin' papers of evenin's; but Dockett he told
me, that very week, I think, that they'd inquested on a man down at
Robertsbridge which had poked and poked up agin' so many bridges an'
banks, like, they couldn't make naun out of him.'

'An' what did Mary say to all these doin's?'

'The old lady bundled her off to the village 'fore her Lunnon father
come, to buy week-end stuff (an' she forgot the half o' it). When we
come in she was upstairs studyin' to be a school-teacher. None told her
naun about it. 'Twadn't girls' affairs.'

'Reckon _she_ knowed?' Jabez went on.

'She? She must have guessed it middlin' close when she saw her money
come back. But she never mentioned it in writing so far's I know. She
were more worritted that night on account of two-three her chickens
bein' drowned, for the flood had skewed their old hen-house round on her