But unfortunately for all concerned, Arthur over-praised himself in that matter, and before a fortnight was told, while we developed our little affair very clever, and I smiled on Arthur in the street afore neighbours, and now and again he invited himself to tea—­if Minnie didn’t dash in and put the lid on!  What I felt I can’t write down in any case now, things happening as they did after; but at the time, I’d have wrung the woman’s neck for a ha’porth of peas.  But she thought she knew the circumstances, and being filled with hateful rage that her father was thinking on another, she struck in the only quarter that mattered and, before I knowed it, I was a lone woman and hope dead.

A good bit happened first, however, and Arthur played up very clever indeed.  He’d come along and pass the time of day and I’d look in his cottage to give an opinion on some trifle; and when he came to a tea on which I’d spent a tidy lot of thought, he enjoyed it so much and welcomed the strength of it and the quality of the cake so hearty that once or twice us caught ourselves up.

“Dammy!” said Arthur, “we’m going it, Mary.  Us had better draw in a thought, or our little games will end in earnest.”

“Not on my side,” I said, and that vexed him I believe, for a man’s a man.  However, I reminded him of his first, and that always daunted his spirit, so he soon went off with his tail between his legs.

But all the same, I couldn’t help contrasting Arthur with Gregory, and though Greg might be called the more important and prosperous man, yet there was always a barrier he wouldn’t pass, while Arthur, though brooding by nature, could get about himself now and again, and in them rare moments, you felt there was a nice, affectionate side to him that only wanted encouraging.

It was three days after that tea and his praises of my hand with a plum cake, that I found myself left.

It came like a bolt from the blue sky, as they say, and I was messing about in my little garden full of an offer I’d got to let my cottage, or sell it, and wondering if I should tell Gregory, when the man himself came in the gate and slammed it home after him.  And I see when I looked in his determined eyes that the time had come.  His jaws were working, too, under his beard, and I reckoned he’d got wind of Arthur and was there to say the word at last.  And I was right enough about Arthur, but cruel wrong about the word.

“I’ll ax you to step in the house,” he said.  “I’ve heard something.”

“I hope it’s interesting news,” I answered.  “Come in by all means, Gregory.  Always welcome.  Will you drink a glass of fresh milk?”

For milk was his favourite beverage.

“No,” he answered.  “I don’t take no milk under this roof no more.”

So then I began to see there was something biting the man, though for my life I couldn’t guess what.

However, he soon told me.

He sat down, took off his hat, wiped his brow, blew his nose and then spoke.