The evening died behind the red-brick suburb, and Miss Rice's strip of garden grew greener. She had finished her dinner, and she leaned back thinking of the story she had heard. She was one of those secluded maiden ladies so common in England, whose experience of life is limited to a tea party, and whose further knowledge of life is derived from the yellow-backed French novels which fill their bookcases.
"How was it that you happened to meet William--I think you said his name was William?"
"It was the day, miss, that I went to fetch the beer from the public-house. It was he that made me drop the jug; you remember, miss, I had to come back for another. I told you about it at the time. When I went out again with a fresh jug he was waiting for me, he followed me to the 'Greyhound' and wanted to pay for the beer--not likely that I'd let him; I told them to put it on the slate, and that I'd pay for it to-morrow. I didn't speak to him on leaving the bar, but he followed me to the gate. He wanted to know what I'd been doing all the time. Then my temper got the better of me, and I said, 'Looking after your child.' 'My child!' says he. 'So there's a child, is there?'"
"I think you told me that he married one of the young ladies at the place you were then in situation?"
"Young lady! No fear, she wasn't no young lady. Anyway, she was too good or too bad for him; for they didn't get on, and are now living separate."
"Does he speak about the child? Does he ask to see him?"
"Lor', yes, miss; he'd the cheek to say the other day that we'd make him our child--our child, indeed! and after all these years I've been working and he doing nothing."
"Perhaps he might like to do something for him; perhaps that's what he's thinking of."
"No, miss, I know him better than that. That's his cunning; he thinks he'll get me through the child."
"In any case I don't see what you'll gain by refusing to speak to him; if you want to do something for the child, you can. You said he was proprietor of a public-house."
"I don't want his money; please God, we'll be able to do without it to the end."
"If I were to die to-morrow, Esther, remember that you would be in exactly the same position as you were when you entered my service. You remember what that was? You have often told me there was only eighteen-pence between you and the workhouse; you owed Mrs. Lewis two weeks' money for the support of the child. I daresay you've saved a little money since you've been with me, but it cannot be more than a few pounds. I don't think that you ought to let this chance slip through your fingers, if not for your own, for Jackie's sake. William, according to his own account, is making money. He may become a rich man; he has no children by his wife; he might like to leave some of his money--in any case, he'd like to leave something--to Jackie."