“Dear Father and Mother “—­for seconds he was unable to read beyond that beginning, so strange yet familiar it seemed after all these years of silence—­“I hope you will not refuse to open a letter from me, and I hope that you will try to forgive me for all that’s past, and for what I am about to do.  You would if you knew all.  I wrote to you and told you I had married Harry Lang.  I hope you had the letter and read it.  I was happy enough for a time, but Harry has had no work to speak of for more than a year, and though we’ve sold all the little I’d got together, we have been nearly starving many a time.  At last, though, Harry has got a good job offered him in a gentleman’s racing stables.  It is a fine berth to have got, the wages is good, and there are rooms to live in, and we can’t refuse it after all we have been through, but they won’t allow no children.

“If work hadn’t been so hard to get, and we starving, we would have waited for something else, for it nearly kills me to part with my Jessie, but I’ve got to, and, dear father and mother, I hope you will forgive me, but I am sending her to you.  She is all I’ve got, and I am nearly crazy at losing her, but I don’t know what else to do.  Life is very hard sometimes.  I know you will be good to her, and you can’t help loving her, I know.  She is very good and quiet, and she will not give mother very much trouble, and I pray with all my heart she may be a better child, and more of a comfort to you than I have ever been.

“Your broken-hearted but loving,

“Lizzie.

“P.S.—­She is five years old and strong and healthy.  I had her christened Jessamine May to remind me of the jessamine and the May-trees at home, for I love my old home dearer than any place in the world.  Forgive me, dear father and mother, and be good to my precious darling.”

For minutes after he had reached the end of the letter, poor Thomas Dawson sat with tears running fast over his weather-worn cheeks.  “My little maid,” he kept saying to himself, with a sob in his breath, “my Lizzie starving! starving! and me with a plenty and to spare!” It was his own child he was thinking of, his own Lizzie, the little maiden who had been the apple of his eye, the joy and pride of his life—­and this was what she had come to!

The kettle sang and boiled on the hob, the fire burnt clear, but the loaf lay on the table uncut, and still the old man sat staring before him at the letter spread on the table, heeding nothing until a thought came which roused him completely—­though only to a deeper sense of trouble.  “However am I going to break the news to mother,” he groaned.  “Oh, my! but it’ll upset her something cruel—­and that lazy, good-for-nothing fellow that she could never abide, have brought it all upon us!”

His thoughts and his wonderings, though, were brought to a sudden stop by the touch of a hand on his shoulder.  “Why, Thomas, you were so quiet I thought you must be asleep, or ill, or something, and I was so worried I had to get up at last and come down and see.”  Then, as her husband turned to her, and she caught sight of his face, she grew really alarmed.  “What is it?  What has happened?  There is trouble, I can see it.  Tell me what it is, quick, for pity’s sake.  Don’t ’ee keep me waiting.”