"To begin with, who is Bevis?" asked Mavis eagerly. "We can't make him out at all. He speaks and looks like a gentleman, and yet he talked about working in the fields. Does he live at Grimbal's Farm? What relation is he to Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock?" "He called Mrs. Penruddock 'Mother'," added Merle, "but he doesn't look the least bit like her son. Is he or not?" "Yes and no," said Jessop, wielding her dish-cloth as she talked. "Mrs. Penruddock has been a good mother to him for a matter of over fourteen years now, but his own mother lies in Chagmouth churchyard. She must have been a handsome woman from all accounts, though I never saw her myself. It was my cousin, Mary, who was barmaid at the 'King's Arms' at the time, who told me. It's a long story. There are many in Chagmouth besides you who've asked themselves if Bevis isn't a gentleman born. But nobody has ever been able to answer the question." "Why? Oh, do tell us!" "We want so immensely to know." Jessop wrung out her dish-cloth with rather irritating slowness, then hung it to dry on a nail. She seemed turning matters over in her mind, and her mental processes were apparently no swifter than her actions. "I don't see why I shouldn't. There's nothing you oughtn't to hear," she replied at last, as if coming to a conclusion. "Everybody in Chagmouth knows about Bevis, and if I don't tell you somebody else will. It's nothing to the lad's discredit, I'm sure. I always say I've a soft corner for Bevis. Such a fine boy he always was, and he'll make a fine man yet--he's worth two of young Williams at The Warren in my opinion. But some folks are born with silver spoons in their mouths and others aren't. Bevis isn't one of the lucky ones, poor lad! Providence always seems to be taking him up and throwing him down again. What'll be the end of him goodness only knows!" The story which Jessop told to the girls, while she polished the silver in the pantry, was lengthy and interspersed with many comments and reflections of her own, and many quotations from what other people had said, but the main facts of the case, as related to Mavis and Merle, were briefly as follows.