'I don't believe it,' he was shouting. 'It can't be true. She's a
God-fearing girl.'

And then I heard my mother. 'Come home, James,' she said, 'come
home--it's true. I told you you was too hard on them. Young folks
will be young folks, and now, perhaps, our little girl has come to
shame instead of being married decent, as she might have been,
though Roman.'

Then there was silence for a bit, and then my father says, speaking
softer, 'Tell me again. I can't think but what I'm dreaming.'

Then mother says--'Don't I tell you she said she'd got the
toothache, and she was going to lie down a bit, and I went to take
her up some camomiles I'd been hotting, and she wasn't there, and
her bolsters and pillows, poor lamb, made up to pretend she was, and
Johnson's Ben, he see her along of William Birt by the Parson's
Shave with his arm round her--God forgive them both!'

Then says my father, 'Here's an end on't. She's no daughter o' mine.
If she was to come back to me, I'd turn her out of doors. Don't let
any one name her name to me never no more. I hain't got no
daughter,' he said, 'and may the Lord--'

I think my mother put her hands afore his mouth, for he stopped
short, and mother, she said--

'Don't curse them, James. You'll be sorry for it, and they'll have
trouble enough without that.'