happened to be quite as familiar with Will’s affairs as Will himself, and while his determination to give Clement and Chris a hundred pounds was easily come at and most cheering to his heart, the necessity of breaking the news to his wife appeared not so easy or pleasant.  Indeed, Will approached the task with some trepidation, for a recent event made it doubly difficult.  They sat together one night, after six weeks of married life, and he plunged into the matter.

“’Tis sad them two being kept apart like this,” he said abruptly.

“’Tis so.  Nobody feels it more’n me.  Matters was hard with us, and now they ’m all smooth and the future seems fairly bright, tu.”

“Very bright,” he said stoutly.  “The hay’s best ever come off my ground, thanks to the manure from Monks Barton; and look at the wurzels!  Miller hisself said he’ve never seed a more promising crop, high or low.  An’ the things be in prime kelter, tu; an’ better than four hunderd pound of uncle’s money still left.”

“Long may it be left, I’m sure.  ‘Tis terrible work dipping into it, an’ I looks at both sides of a halfpenny ’fore I spend it.  Wish you would.  You’m tu generous, Will.  But accounts are that difficult.”

This was not the spirit of the hour, however.

“I was gwaine to say that out of all our happiness an’ fortune we might let a little bubble awver for Chris—­eh?  She’m such a gude gal, an’ you love her so dearly as what I do a’most.”

Phoebe read the project in a flash, but yet invited her husband to explain.

“What d’you mean?” she asked distrustfully and coldly.

“I can see in your face you knaw well enough.  That four-hunderd-odd pound.  I’ve sometimes thought I should have given Chris a bit of the windfall when first it comed.  But now—­well, theer’s this cruel coil failed on ’em.  You knaw the hardness of waiting.  ’Twould be a butivul thing to let ’em marry an’ feel’t was thanks to us.”

“You want to go giving them money?”

“Not ‘give’ ’zactly.  Us’ll call it a loan, till the time they see their way clearer.”

Phoebe sighed and was silent for a while.

“Poor dears,” she said at length.  “I feel for ’em in my heart, same as you do; yet somehow it doan’t look right.”

“Not right, Phoebe?”

“Not wise, then.  Remember what you say the winters be up here—­such dreary months with no money coming in and all gwaine out to keep life in the things.”

“‘Tis a black, bitin’ business on the high farms—­caan’t deny that.”

“Money flies so.”

“Then let some fly to a gude end.  You knaw I’m a hard, keen man where other people be concerned, most times.”

His wife laughed frankly, and he grew red.

“Damn it, Phoebe, doan’t you take me like that else you’ll get the rough edge of my tongue.  ’Tis for you to agree with what I’m pleased to say, not contradict it.  I be a hard, keen man, and knaws the value of money as well as another.  But Chris is my awn sister, an’ the long an’ the short is, I’m gwaine to give Clem Hicks a hunderd pound.”