“What a fool you are!  Why, for two reasons I should think.  Firstly, because your father promised her husband; secondly, because ’tis half the way to keeping Nathan Coaker in Ireland.  If she lets him know as you be going to do the rightful thing, he’ll have no more quarrel with you, since he don’t know about you and Mary.  Then, what you’ve got to do is to hurry on the match with her; and when you’m once married, ’tis all safe.  Very like you’ll not have to offer the man a penny after all.”

“You’d best see Mrs. White to-morrow then,” said Peter.

“I’ll see her this very night,” answered the wise woman.  “In kicklish matters of this kind an hour may make all the difference for good or evil.  To-night I’ll tell her that the house is hers on condition that her brother Nathan don’t come from Ireland this side o’ Christmas; and she’ll bless your name and do her best to keep him away altogether.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she succeeded, and it might even happen that when he comes to know of your marriage and hears that ’tis over and done, that he’ll give up the thought of coming at all, and you’ll get out of it with credit and a whole skin.”

Peter thanked her a lot, and she was as good as her word, and went to see Widow White that very same evening.

She didn’t put it to Sarah quite like she’d promised; but she explained that Mr. Hacker was quite a reasonable man in some ways, even where females were concerned, and that he had undertaken to let Sarah keep her house so long as she and Mr. French should live.  Which, of course, was all that Mrs. White or her Johnny cared about.

“Hacker naturally thinks that your brother is still living,” explained Charity.  “And mind you take mighty good care not to tell him ’tisn’t so.  The longer he supposes that Nathan is alive, the better for us all.  And what you’ve got to say presently be this—­that so soon as you told Nathan ’twas all right about the cottage, he changed his mind about coming to Postbridge for the present.”

“’Twill be a lie,” said Mrs. White.

“’Twill be a white lie, however,” answered Charity; “and ’twill help a good many people out of a hobble and do harm to none; so I advise you to tell it.”

And Sarah did tell it—­with wonderful, far-reaching results, I’m sure; for it meant that she had her cottage for life; and that she had Johnny French for life also; and it meant that Mary married Peter Hacker afore the next Christmas and went honeymooning to London town for a week with the man; and it meant that, unbeknownst each to t’others, Sarah and Mary and Peter gived my mistress the money they promised her.  So Charity Badge came out of the maze with flying colours, you might say, not to mention fifty golden pounds, all made out of her own head.

And many such like things she did, though never did they fetch such a dollop of money again.

No.  XII