“Why, you see, Miss, he was a ropemaker, and was in a good way of business, and had got above the world; and John, he was only under-gardener at the Squire’s. He was a handy, sharp young man; but he had not any thing but just what he earned from week to week; and father said, he would not hear of no such nonsense, and we must leave off courting. We both saw that father was right not to agree to our marrying then; but we thought it hard that we were not to speak to each other any more. My own mother was dead; and my father’s second wife she aggravated him against us, and said, if we saw each other as usual, we should be sure to marry; and then he would have to keep us off the parish; and that I was a likely, fresh-coloured girl, and might do better for myself, and might get somebody who would be a help instead of a hindrance to the family. So I told John I would not marry without father’s leave, for I knew that would be wrong; but that I would never have any body but him, if it was ever so. ”My stepmother, she never let me out of her sight, and always kept me to my work at home; and I never saw John to speak to him. Of a Sunday, when we came out of church, he always stood near the hand-gate, and sometimes, if there was only father, he opened it for us: and as long as he did that, I was sure he was true to me. “One morning, about a year after my father had said he would not hear no more of John Roberts, and that his girl should marry somebody as had a house to take her to, and enough to keep her when he had got her there; ’twas a Monday-morning, and I had washed up the tea-things, and swept up the hearth, and was just holding a bit of wood-embers in the tongs for father to light his pipe by, before he went to his work, when what should I see but John’s face as he went by the window to the door. I was like to let the tongs fall, it came upon me so sudden! John knocked at the door, and I shook all over, as if I had got the ague; for I thought, to be sure, father would be in a towering passion. Father, he never turned round; but he kept drawing in his breath to make the pipe light, and he said, ‘Why don’t you go and open the door, girl?’ So I went to the door, and opened it, and in stepped John; and he said never a word to me, he only just gave me a look, and he went straight up to father, and said:— “‘Mr. Ansell, don’t take it amiss if I am come to say a few plain words to you. You won’t let me have your daughter—you think we shall come into trouble, and be a burthen upon you; and you think Milly can do better for herself?’ “‘Yes!’ said my father; ‘you speak right enough.’