'Oh, well!' I said, 'if you can't take joking better than this, it's
the last time I'll ever try joking with you.'

And I walked out of the church, and the other folks who had run up
to see what was the matter come out with me. And they two was left
alone.

I suppose it was only human nature that, as I come round the church,
I should get on the top of a tombstone and look in to see what they
was doing. It was the little window where a pane was broken by a
stone last summer, and so I heard what they was saying. He was
trying to tell her what I had told him--quite as much for her own
good as for mine, as you have seen; but she didn't seem to want to
listen.

'Oh, never mind all that now, Jack,' she says, with arms round his
neck. 'What does it matter about a silly joke now that I have got
you, and it's all right betwixt us?'

I thought it my duty to go straight home and tell uncle she was up
in the church, kissing and cuddling with Jack Halibut; and he took
his stick and started off after her.

But he met them at the garden gate, and Jack, he came forward, and
he says--

'Mr. Kenworthy, I have had hard thoughts of you this three year, but
I see you was right, for if I had never gone away, I should never
have been able to keep my little girl as she should be kept, and as