“Hush! Mrs. Hulme. I owe life and all that life has given to your father and yourself. What little I have done in return has been but dust in the balance. Yet as it is your desire, and I know baby would be best in your hands, if grandmother will consent to part with her, Nelly and her nurse shall go back with you for the coming summer months.” And so, though parting with Ellen’s baby seemed parting with Ellen over again, the little blossom went away to other blossoms on the healthy hill-side. Tom Hulme was no longer overlooker, but responsible manager at the Whaley-Bridge Mill, with a good salary; and if Jabez gratefully traced his fortune back to his cradle, so too did they trace their amended position to the same source. But Bess more immediately referred to the benefit Simon Clegg had derived from the Buxton Baths, whither Jabez had sent him year after year, for the relief of his rheumatism, and to his care of steadfast little Sim. He had first placed the crippled lad with a doctor celebrated for his treatment of bodily deformities, under whom the boy’s bent body had strengthened and straightened considerably, and then removed him for education to the house of a married clergyman, where there were no rough boys to torment him. Jabez knew well what were the amenities of public schools. CHAPTER THE FORTY-SEVENTH. THE LAST ACT. The catastrophe which deprived Laurence Aspinall of a father, and had almost robbed him of a loving, patient wife, would have steadied any man less reckless and selfish than he. But that he should rescue strangers, and Jabez save his wife, and that through transfusion the blood of Jabez should course through Augusta’s veins, formed a combination of mischances beyond parallel, and the honey was changed to gall. Nay, he was graceless enough to exclaim, in the first burst of his jealous rage, “I would rather she had died outright than have that fellow triumph in her restoration through his means. D—— him!” And yet there were times when in his uxorious fondness he wholly persuaded himself, and half persuaded her, that his very extravagances arose from excess of love! His fancied wrongs culminated when first the will of his father, and after a brief period that of Augusta’s father, were read and proved. The former set forth that, disgusted with the ungentleman-like excesses of his son, and convinced that his course of lavish extravagance would end in penury, he had determined to settle on his son’s wife, Augusta Aspinall, for her sole use and benefit, the house and premises on Ardwick Green, with all therein contained, together with a sufficient sum in the funds to maintain a befitting state; in the event of her decease, the reversion to pass to any child or children she had or might hereafter bear to his son Laurence. To him he left the residue of his means, and the old business in Cannon Street, with a charge to apply himself to merchandise.