had aroused in him, were wholly free from shadow of ignoble motive;
he was pained, and the frequent turning away of his look betrayed
that part of the feeling was caused by observation of the woman
herself, but every movement visible on his features was subdued by
patience and mildness. Suffering was a life's habit with him, and
its fruit in this instance that which (spite of moral commonplace)
it least often bears--self-conquest.

'You haven't told me yet,' he said, with quiet disregard of her
irrelevancies, 'whether or not her father's name was Joseph
Snowdon.'

'There's no call to hide it. That was his name. I've got letters of
his writin'. "J. J. Snowdon" stands at the end, plain enough. And he
was your son, was he?'

'He was. But have you any reason to think he's dead?'

'Dead! I never heard as he was. But then I never heard as he was
livin', neither. When his wife went, poor thing--an' it was a
chill on the liver, they said; it took her very sudden--he says to
me, "Mrs. Peckover," he says, "I know you for a motherly woman"--
just like that--see?--"I know you for a motherly woman," he
says, "an' the idea I have in my 'ed is as I should like to leave
Janey in your care, 'cause," he says, "I've got work in Birmingham,
an' I don't see how I'm to take her with me. Understand me?" he
says. "Oh!" I says--not feelin' quite sure what I'd ought to do--
see? "Oh!" I says. "Yes," he says; "an' between you an' me," he
says, "there won't be no misunderstanding. If you'll keep Janey with
you"--an' she was goin' to school at the time, 'cause she went to