and good-bye.'

But he held my hands tight.

'Good-bye, William,' I says again. 'I'm going. I'm going home.'

'Yes, my girl,' says he, 'you are going home; you're going home with
me to my mother.' And he was masterful enough then, I can tell you.
'If your father would throw you off without knowing the rights or
wrongs of the story, it's not for him you should be giving up your
happiness and mine, my girl. Come home to my mother, and let me see
the man who dares to say anything against my wife.'

And whether it was father's being so hard and saying what he did
about me before all those men, or whether it was me knowing that
mother had stood up for us secret all the time, or whether it was
because I loved William so much, or because he loved me so much, I
don't know. But I didn't say another word, only began to cry, and we
got downstairs and straight home to William's mother, and we told
her all about it; and we was cried in church next Sunday, and I
stayed with the old lady until we was married, and many a year
after; and a good mother she was to me, though only in law, and a
good granny to our children when they come. And I wasn't so unhappy
as you may think, because mother come to see me directly, and she
was at our wedding; and father, he didn't say anything to prevent
her going.

When I was churched after my first, and the boy was christened--in
our own church, for I had made William promise it should be so if
ever we had any--mother was there, and she said to me: 'Take the