So Milly waited.  She loved William in a temperate sort of way, though there was points in his character she didn’t much hold with; but she’d given her word to wed him in fullness of time, and she was the sort never to part from her word for no man.  They kept company calm and contented, with no emotions much to either side, though now-and-a-gain William would venture to say he thought she might bate her terms and take him for ten shillings less.  But this she weren’t prepared to do; and so it stood when Mrs. Bird died and Milly, who had worshipped the dead woman, came to take her place till time had worked on Jonas and he was able to look round for another.  For that his Sarah had always wished he should do, well knowing the poor man couldn’t carry on without a spouse.

Jonas was terrible obliged to Milly for coming, and to William for letting her do so, and he was the soul of goodness in the whole matter and made William free of his house and saved him the price of many a meal.  In fact William rather exceeded reason in that matter and dropped in at supper-time too often for decency; but it was his sweetheart and not Jonas who opened his eyes to his manners and told him there was reason in all things.

They weren’t none too mad in love, as Jonas found out in course of time.  In fact Milly was temperate in all things and had never known to lose her nerve or temper; while as for William White, he’d got her promise and knew she was the faithful-unto-death sort and would wait till he could raise what she considered the proper income for a married woman to begin upon.

The widower soon found out the fashion of sense that belonged to Milly for, while still in his great grief, he began to talk of spending fifty pounds of capital on Sarah’s grave, and she heard him and advised against.

“As to that,” she said, “I knew your dear wife better’n anybody on earth but yourself, Jonas, and this I will say:  if she thought you’d heaved up fifty pounds’ worth of marble stone on her, she wouldn’t lie quiet for an instant moment.  You know that modesty was Sarah’s passion, and she’d rather have a pink daisy on her pit and a blackbird pulling a worm out of the green grass than all the monuments in the stone-cutter’s window.”

He listened and she ran on: 

“Her virtues be in our hearts, and it won’t better it to print ’em in the churchyard; and if I was you and wanted to make heaven a brighter place for Sarah than it already is, I’d lift up a modest affair and put a bit of money away to goody for your little ones.”

“I dare say that’s a very clever thought,” admitted Jonas.

“Yes, it is, then,” went on Milly.  “She didn’t help you to be a saver for vain things like grave-stones that don’t bring in no interest to nobody.  And if it was the measurement of your sorrow, I’d say nothing, but ’tis well known remorse be at the foundation of half the fine monuments widow men put up to their partners, and you don’t need to tell nobody in Thorpe-Michael what you thought of Sarah and how she was the light of your house, for we well know it.”