"I know you're good, Mo." She caught at the hand he held out to give her, and kept it. "I know you're good, and you'll do like you say. Only I hope he won't come this way no more. I hope he don't know I'm here." She seemed to shudder at the thought of him. "Don't he know you're here? That's rum, too. But it's rum, all round. Things _are_ rum, sometimes. Now, just you take it easy, M'riar, and if there's anything you'll be for telling me--because I'm an old friend like, d'ye see?--why, just you tell me as much as comes easy, and no more. Or just tell me nothing at all, if it sootes you better, and I'll set here and give an ear to it." Uncle Mo resumed his former seat, and Aunt M'riar put back the hand he released in her apron, its usual place when not on active service. "There's nothing in it I wouldn't tell, Mo--not to you--and it won't use much of the candle to tell it. I'd be the easier for you to know, only I'm not so quick as some at the telling of things." She seemed puzzled how to begin. Uncle Moses helped. "How long is it since you set eyes on him?" "Twenty-five years--all of twenty-five years." Uncle Mo was greatly relieved at hearing this. "Well, but, M'riar--twenty-five years! You're shet of the beggar--clean shet of him! You are _that_, old girl, legally and factually. But then," said he, "when was you married to him?" "I've got my lines to show for that, Mo. July six, eighteen twenty-nine." Uncle Mo repeated the date slowly after her, and then seemed to plunge into a perplexing calculation, very distorting to the natural repose of his face. Touching his finger-tips appeared to make his task easier. After some effort, which ended without clear results, he said:--"What I'm trying to make out is, how long was you and him keeping house? Because it don't figure up. How long should you say?" "We were together six weeks--no more." "And you--you never seen him since?" "Never since. Twenty-five years agone, this last July!" At which Uncle Mo was so confounded that words failed him. His only resource was a long whistle. Aunt M'riar, on the contrary, seemed to acquire narrative powers from hearing her own voice, and continued:--"I hadn't known him a twelvemonth, and I should have been wiser than to listen to him--at my age, over one-and-twenty!" "But you made him marry you, M'riar?" "I did that, Mo. And I have the lines and my ring, to show it. But I never told a soul, not even mother. I wouldn't have told her, to be stopped--so bad I was!... What!--Dolly--Dolly's mother? Why, she was just a young child, Dave's age!... How did I come to know him? It was one day in the bar--he came in with Tom Spring, and ordered him a quart of old Kennett. He was dressed like a gentleman, and free with his money...." "I knew old Tom Spring--he's only dead this two years past. I s'pose that was The Tun, near by Piccadilly, I've heard you speak on."