the quaintest names, until the last had tramped up the sanded passage and had turned out into the rain. She blew out the candles, bolted the door behind the retiring guests, and returned to the smaller room. The old man had gone upstairs, and the girl was preparing to follow. The staircase, with steps of wellscoured white-sanded wood, opened into this snug little room, and the mother, closing the door, stood with her shoulders against it regarding Dinah. The girl looked at her meekly, but with an air a little startled.

'Our Dinah,' said the mother, 'I want to speak to you. You'd better sit down.' The girl obeyed. There's somethin' the matter wi' you. What is it?'

'There's nothing the matter with me, mother,' answered Dinah wearily.

'My gell,' said Mrs. Banks advancing, and bending towards her with an anxious tremulous severity, you can't deceive me. There's somethin' the matter.'

'No,' said Dinah, looking puzzled; 'I'm a bit dull. That's all.'

'Dinah, you can't deceive an old experienced woman. There's somethin' the matter with you, and somethin' very dreadful. Tell me this minute what it is.'

Oh, mother,' said Dinah, in an agitated whisper, am I going to die?'

'It'd a'most be better if you was,' said the mother. Dinah's face was white, and her eyes were wide open with fear, but at this she flushed suddenly, and shrank and cowered, with her arms drawn across her face. Her very ears and neck were red and white by turns, as she bent down.

6

Is it that?' she sobbed; oh, is it that?'

'Dinah! Dinah! you wicked gell,' said her mother. Tell me who it is!' Dinah bent lower and lower, and drew herself away as any defenceless thing draws back into itself at the touch of an intruding finger. Her mother seized one of her hands, and strove to draw it from her face, but Dinah held her head down so resolutely, and drew her arms so tightly towards herself, that the old woman was powerless to effect her purpose. she repeated severely, relinquishing her hand. Bushell as has broke his father's and mother's heart, and made a huzzy o' you as well?'

Tell me who it is!'

'Is it young Joe

'Oh, mother,' cried Dinah, dropping suddenly upon her knees, and seizing the old woman by both hands, we were married at Waston Church last Whitsuntide.' Dinah's mother dropped down upon her knees and faced the girl.

'You was married? At Whitsuntide? You an' young Joe Bushell?'

'Yes,' cried the girl, and suddenly releasing her mother's hands, she fell forward upon the floor, and hiding her face again, cried passionately. The elder woman fell forward also, and clipping her by the waist, strove to lift her, but again Dinah would not move. So they knelt there and mingled their tears.

'Dinah,' said the mother, whispering, 'it never crossed my mind till to-night when you got up to get your father's candle, an' then it come to me at a run. But, Dinah, I'm sorry for you, an' you'll have a bad time wi' your father an' the neighbours. Oh, you poor silly gell not to tell me as you was married! An' now he's gone, the Lord alone knows wheer.'

'He'll come back again,' sobbed Dinah. If he's alive, he'll come back again.'

Haven't you heerd on him, neither?' asked her mother in surprise and fear.

'No,' wept Dinah, never since the day he went away. Oh, mother, do you think he's dead? They say he's gone to America, an' he might ha' been drowned at sea, or anything. Oh, I can't think as if he'd been alive he'd ha' left like this. And he promised to send my lines an' all, an' I've never heard a word.'

'Dinah,' said the mother in a horror-stricken whisper, haven't you got your lines?'

'No,' answered Dinab, still weeping. He promised to send 'em the day he went away.'

Then the mother lifted up her voice and wept aloud.

'Dinah, you're a ruined gell, and I'm a miserable disgraced old woman!'

The immortal Doctor Marigold remarks that in his father's days registration hadn't come up much.' So far as the knowledge of poor Dinah and her mother went, registration had not come up at all. To this very day, in that part of England in which they lived, there are women who believe that the possession of their 'marriage lines' is the only surety of their own honour. To lose their lines,' in the belief of those simple souls, would be to invalidate the marriage ceremony, and to make their children illegitimate. Nor is this curious superstition confined to the downright ignorant classes, as you might fancy. Fairly well-to-do people, who can read the newspaper without spelling the hard words at all, and who would with righteous anger resent the imputation of ignorance, still stick to the belief. Thirty years ago it was probably general.

Mrs. Banks, landlady of the Saracen's Head, was not by nature

an imaginative or an inventive woman. Unless you choose to call the immortal allegories of Bunyan by that name, she had never read a romance in her life. Nowadays Mr. Wilkie Collins is to the fore to help anybody to an elaborate plot upon emergency, and there is, indeed, scarcely a condition of life imaginable upon which modern fiction could not throw a light more or less direct and helpful. But feminine human nature existed on much the same lines as now before the popular novelist came into being. Necessity is the mother of invention, and here if anywhere in the world was a necessity of the sternest sort. At any risk, the family reputation must be saved: at any risk short of crime. It would be surely the very whitest of white lies if the mother could acknowledge her daughter's child as her own, and could thereby save her daughter's reputation. In any case, the material cost of the child's maintenance would fall upon the Saracen, and his shoulders were broad enough to bear without tremor a score of such burdens. Dinah was the only child of her parents, and if she shared in the deceit she could rob nobody. So the old woman mellowed her plan, and slowly turned it over, and then laid it before Dinah. 'Dinah, my dear, we're in a peck o' to get weselves out on it as best we can. heart to know it, and it mustn't be let

trouble, and we shall ha' It ud break thy father's get to his hearin' at all.'

'How can we help it?' asked Dinah, forlorn and pale.

The old lady revealed her plan in a sentence.

'He must be made to think as the child's mine.' Dinah quivered at this. One of those amazing and mysterious instincts which make mothers what they are, awoke in her, and she felt as if her unborn baby were being stolen from her. The mother saw this and understood it, being a mother. By yourself it'll be all He'll be sore amazed,

your own. I must tell Daniel as I expect it. I doubt, but you must get away into the country when the time's comin', an' I must come to see you. Then you'll ha' to write to your father an' say as I'm took ill, an' can't come back again. Then, when it's all o'er, we can come back together, an' nobody 'll think anythin' about it.'

From the first moment of Dinah's proclamation of the truth, there had been no shadow of doubt in the mother's mind. She believed the story unreservedly, and when Dinah told it in full, setting forth the errant Young Joe's reasons for concealment, she, though her anger burned against the runaway, forgave her daughter the folly of which she had been guilty.

The winter wore away, and through it all Dinah was kept almost a prisoner. Daniel was not often curious about her, but when he was his wife was equal to the occasion, and satisfied him.

easily. What should make him believe that a plot like the beginning of a melodrama was going on at the Saracen's Head? The spring began to hint that it was coming, and the time drew near.

Our Daniel,' said Mrs. Banks to her husband, our Dinah is looking a bit delicate, don't you fancy?'

Daniel was a good husband, and agreed with his wife in all things. He had had five-and-twenty years of married life, and found that a policy of general acquiescence kept things smooth.

'Is her?' said Daniel. Well, I thought I'd noticed it myself.'

'I think o' sendin' her to Wardenb'ry,' said Mrs. Banks, for change of air, like. What do you say, Daniel?'

'Very well, missis,' said that easy man.

of good, mayhap, poor wench!'

It'll do her a bit

Mayhap it will, Daniel,' said Mrs. Banks. We'll go to

morrow.

Daniel was somewhat taken aback by this precipitancy. Commonly at the Saracen's Head a thing was mentioned, discussed, put by, mentioned and discussed again, and put into action long after in less sleepy places it would have been forgotten. He offered no opposition. He was accustomed to philosophise about women in his own way. 'A woman,' he had been known to say, 'is like a pig. Her'll nayther be led nor drove, an' it's as tryin' to a mon to do one as it is to do the t'other.' So, as a rule, Daniel said nothing, but encouraged his digestive apparatus by patting his waistcoat, and let things take their course.

Wardenbury was thirty miles off, and Daniel knew it vaguely as being Coventry way. Mrs. Banks had relatives there, and in the long course of her married life had paid it two or three visits. Daniel used to speak of himself as being no great hands of a traveller.' He had been born at the Saracen's Head, and had never been farther away than Birmingham. But though he was no traveller, and might, had he been a demonstrative man, have run a risk of seeming hen-pecked, he had his feelings as a husband.

'Mother,' he advised, I shouldn't go to Wardenb'ry yet, if I was you. Think o' your condition.'

Think o' your own condition, y' ode timberhead!' returned his wife, an' leave me to think o' mine.'

Well, think on it,' said Daniel. Mrs. Banks bustled away to tell Dinah that matters were arranged, and to help her to prepare for the journey. The landlord of the Saracen was not in the least degree offended by his wife's outspokenness. Had she even called upon him to confirm her criticism he would probably have done it.

The morrow came, and Dinah was smuggled into the trap in the back yard. The mother followed. A shock-headed stable-boy called Jabez drove the pair to the railway station, and returned alone. Next morning came a letter to Daniel stating that Mrs. Banks would spend a day or two at Wardenbury.

'I knowed how it 'ud be,' said Daniel. Once let 'em goo agaddin' about, an' thee mays't whistle for 'em afore they comin' back again.' He had not the remotest suspicion. He had never read anything more romantic than an invoice for wines and spirits, and he had never seen a play. Even if he had, why should he suspect his wife and daughter? The day or two lengthened into a week, and then came the news that he was again a father. His old age was blessed with a son. He took an extra glass or two on the strength of it, and went about with an air of proprietorial gravity, crossed at times by an involuntary smile. Towards evening the neighbours dropped in as usual. Daniel imparted the news and was congratulated. He sat in his big arm-chair with his hands resting on the crook of a thick walking-stick and his elbows squared, and looked as if he thought that he deserved the congratulations and had earned the applause of the world. There was an air upon him as of one who might boast if he would, but would not. The little snuggery was rather better filled than common that evening, and the health of the son and heir was drunk pretty frequently. Daniel could do nothing less than join. Liquor took little effect upon him: he was accustomed to it, and his inner man was toughened to its assaults. It floated his smile to the surface a little oftener, that was all. But when closing time came, and he was left alone, he gave vent to his joy and triumph. He struck his stick upon the floor with both hands, and arose; and laughed long and loud.

'Ha, ha ha!' cried Daniel, shaking and beaming; 'theer's life in th' ode dog yit.'

That night shock-headed Jabez had to guide the landlord upstairs, but on the morrow the old man had accepted the position of affairs, and awaited the arrival of the infant and his mother with an approach to phlegm. He had never received many letters, and had never had occasion to write many. The lack of correspondence did not affect him. Dinah wrote once or twice, but that was all, and mother and daughter came back with the infant, after little more than a month from the date of their departure. Dinah's restoration to health seemed little less than miraculous. Her languid heavy step was changed for one light and full of energy. Her face beamed and bloomed once more, and there was no trace of grief in her eyes. And surely never was sister so D ])

VOL. XLIII. NO. CLXXII.