Everybody liked Jonas, for he was a kindly and well-intending creature, and his wife had been such another, and a good few women rushed to the rescue when the blow fell.  And his master, a childless man and very fond of Bird, offered to adopt one of his boys and take the lad off his hands.  But Jonas clung to all three, because, as he truly said, they each had a good bit of their mother in ’em and he couldn’t spare a pinch of Sarah.  And his wife’s first and dearest woman friend it was who came to the rescue at this season and stopped along with Jonas, for the children’s sake and the dead woman’s.

Milly Bassett, she was called, and she ministered to the orphaned children and talked sense to the widow man; and though an old maid here and there didn’t think it a seemly thing for Milly to take up her life under Bird’s roof, the understanding and intelligent sort thought no evil.  For of such a creature as Milly Bassett no evil could be thought.

She was the finest-minded woman ever came out of Thorpe-Michael in my opinion, and she only had one idol and that was duty, and when Sarah, on her death-bed, prayed Milly to watch over Jonas and the family till the poor man recovered from his sorrows and wed again, then Milly promised to do so.  And her promises were sacred in her eyes.  And if any was mean enough to think ill of her for so doing, she’d have said such folk didn’t know her and their opinions were no matter.

A flaxen woman—­grey-eyed and generous built—­was Milly.  She lived with an old mother who was a laundress, and the old mother took it very ill when her daughter went to mind the dead woman’s little ones; but, as Milly herself said, there was only one man who needed to be considered before she went to her holy task, and that was William White.

You see, Miss Bassett had long been tokened to William, and if he’d objected, it must have put her in a very awkward position with the promise to a dead woman pulling one way and her duty to a live lover pulling the other.  But it happened that William White was a very good friend to Jonas, like everybody else, and he didn’t see no good reason why for his sweetheart shouldn’t lend a hand at such a sorrowful time.

Moreover, there was a bit of money in it, and Milly’s William happened to be a man whose opinions and principles had never been known to stand between him and a shilling.  So when Jonas insisted on paying Milly Bassett ten bob a week over and above her keep—­all clear profit—­William raised no objection whatever.  He weren’t a jealous man—­quite the contrary—­and his engagement to marry Milly weren’t an affair of yesterday.  In fact, at this time, they’d been contracted a good two years, and though the man felt quite willing to wed when ever Milly was minded to, she’d got her ideas and she’d made it clear from the very start that not until her intended could show her four pound a week would she take the step.

And William White, though a good horseman and a champion with the plough and well thought upon by Farmer Northway, could not yet rise to that figure, though he went in hope that it might happen.  He’d tried round about on the farms to better his wages, for he was amazing fond of money, but up to the present nobody seemed to think William was worth more than three pound ten, or three pound with a cottage.