mother was a decent body, who wore a lilac print on week-days and a
plain black gown on Sunday for all she was a well-to-do farmer's
wife, and might have gone smart as a cock pheasant.

It was at tea-time, and I was a-crying on to my bread-and-butter,
and mother sniffing a little for company behind the tea-tray, and
father, he bangs down his fist in a way to make the cups rattle
again, and he says--

'You've got to give him up, my girl. You write and tell him so, and
I'll take the letter as I go down to the church to-night to
practice. I've been a good father to you, and you must be a good
girl to me; and if you was to marry him, him being what he is, I'd
never speak to you again in this world or the next.'

'You wouldn't have any chance in the next, I'm afraid, James,' said
my mother gently, 'for her poor soul, it couldn't hope to go to the
blessed place after that.'

'I should hope not,' said my father, and with that he got up and
went out, half his tea not drunk left in the mug.

Well, I wrote that letter, and I told William right enough that him
and me could never be anything but friends, and that he must think
of me as a sister, and that was what father told me to say. But I
hope it wasn't very wrong of me to put in a little bit of my own,
and this is what I said after I had told him about the friend and
sister--

'But, dear William,' says I, 'I shall never love anybody but you,