Miss Smith gave gracious consent. They were married, and lived most happily together. Poor little Mary's temper was none of the best; but Richard made every allowance: "Breaking down of the business--other's death--having to marry a poor fellow like him, &c." In short, he proved the most humble and devoted of husbands, toiled like a slave to keep his wife like a lady, and never forgot the honour she had conferred upon him; to this honour Mrs. Jones added, after three years, by presenting him with a sickly baby, which, to its mother's name of Mary, proudly added that of its maternal grandfather Smith. A year after the birth of Mary Smith Jones, her mother died. The affections of the widower centred on his child; he had, indeed, felt more awe than fondness for his deceased wife--love had never entered his heart; he earned it with him, pure and virgin, to the grave, impressed with but one image--that of his daughter. He reared his little baby alone and unaided. Once, indeed, a female friend insisted on relieving him from the charge; but, after surrendering his treasure to her, after spending a sleepless night, he rose with dawn, and went and fetched back his darling. During his wife's lifetime, he had been employed in a large warehouse; but now, in order to stay at home, he turned basket-maker. His child slept with him, cradled in his arms; he washed, combed, dressed it himself every morning, and made a woman of himself for its sake. When Mary grew up, her father sent her to school, and resumed his more profitable out-door occupation. After a long search and much deliberation, he prenticed her to Rachel Gray, and with her Mary Jones had now been about a month. "How pretty she looked, with that bit of pink on her cheek," soliloquized Richard Jones, as he turned round the corner of the street on his way homewards; and fairer than his mistress's image to the lover's fancy, young Mary's face rose before her father on the gloom of the dark night. A woman's voice suddenly broke on his reverie. She asked him to direct her to the nearest grocer's shop. "I am a stranger to the neighbourhood," he replied; "but I dare say this young person can tell us;" and he stopped a servant-girl, and put the question to her. "A grocer's shop?" she said, "there's not one within a mile. You must go down the next street on your right-hand, turn into the alley on your left, then turn to your right again, and if you take the fifth street after that, it will take you to the Teapot." She had to repeat her directions twice before the woman fairly understood them. "What a chance!" thought Jones, as he again walked on; "not a grocer's shop within a mile. Now, suppose I had, say fifty pounds, just to open with, how soon the thing would do for itself. And then I'd have my little Mary at home with me. Yes, that would be something!"