“I didn’t mistake nothing,” said Joe, doggedly, “she’s just as cold and ’eartless as they’re made, and I’m werry glad as she never was my missus. She stood there, a’glaring at me, and she says, ‘I ain’t got no father nor mother,’ she says, ‘and you’re a himpostor,’ and she just rings the bell and orders the feller in green to put me out of the ’ouse, and mind I never enters it again. That’s your Hannah, and that’s gospel truth!” “I can’t never believe it!” repeated poor Mrs. Stubbs, “she was allays so humble, was our Hannah! I take blame to myself as I ever left ’er at Mrs. Battleby’s, pore gal, and with all them devils about ’er too. I did ought to ’ave brought ’er ’ome, and exercised them out of ’er! But to speak in that rumptious manner! No! I can’t never believe it! She was sich a simple one, was our Hannah--allays ready to cry if spoke to, almost a natural as you may say, but never ’aughty or proud. You went to the wrong ’ouse, Joe Brushwood! I’ll maintain it to the last day of my life, which it won’t be long!” she added, with a sigh. “O! well! Missus,” exclaimed Joe, rather nettled, “I ’opes as Mr. Stubbs will do ’is own work another time, for ’twasn’t a pleasant job, I can tell ye. To ’ave to encounter a young ’ooman as you’ve rejected in marriage, and ’ear all the nasty things she may choose to say to you, ain’t all jam, I’d rather meet the old gentleman myself any day.” “Well! you could ’ardly expect ’er to shake you by the ’and, and she a markiness and a baroness both in one, Joe Brushwood! You was a fool to reject ’er, that you was, and to lose the chance of being a baron yourself! Of course I know as ’er position and fortune ’ave set ’er above us, but I’ll never believe but what my Hannah--as was so good ’earted and simple, though a bit slow--Lord! ’ow my arms ’ave ached trying to shake that gal up!--remembers ’er pore father and mother, who never fell out with ’er, until she took up with the Devil and hall ’is imps!” Joe Brushwood had left the cottage, grumbling at their incredulity and ingratitude, but the next day made him regret he had said so much. The postman brought Stubbs that wonderful letter, enclosing twenty pounds, with Hannah’s love. The poor mother, who was really in the last stage of an internal disease, against which she had borne up bravely, until no longer able to stand, wept tears of thankfulness over her daughter’s generosity, and quite forgot that she had been so sure that Joe had gone to the wrong house. That young man was so beset with reproaches, when he next showed his face in their midst, that he fled incontinently from the cottage, and left the Stubbs’ family to manage their own affairs for the future. And they--relieved from present necessity--sat down quite contented with spending their twenty pounds and talking of their daughter, the markiness, to any neighbour who might chance to look in.