“But, after all, I have not told you the truth.  It is so long ago, and no one ever knew how much I thought of it at the time, unless, indeed, my dear mother guessed; but I may say that there was a time when I did not think I should have been only Miss Matty Jenkyns all my life; for even if I did meet with any one who wished to marry me now (and, as Miss Pole says, one is never too safe), I could not take him—­I hope he would not take it too much to heart, but I could not take him—­or any one but the person I once thought I should be married to; and he is dead and gone, and he never knew how it all came about that I said ‘No,’ when I had thought many and many a time—­Well, it’s no matter what I thought.  God ordains it all, and I am very happy, my dear.  No one has such kind friends as I,” continued she, taking my hand and holding it in hers.

If I had never known of Mr Holbrook, I could have said something in this pause, but as I had, I could not think of anything that would come in naturally, and so we both kept silence for a little time.

“My father once made us,” she began, “keep a diary, in two columns; on one side we were to put down in the morning what we thought would be the course and events of the coming day, and at night we were to put down on the other side what really had happened.  It would be to some people rather a sad way of telling their lives,” (a tear dropped upon my hand at these words)—­“I don’t mean that mine has been sad, only so very different to what I expected.  I remember, one winter’s evening, sitting over our bedroom fire with Deborah—­I remember it as if it were yesterday—­and we were planning our future lives, both of us were planning, though only she talked about it.  She said she should like to marry an archdeacon, and write his charges; and you know, my dear, she never was married, and, for aught I know, she never spoke to an unmarried archdeacon in her life.  I never was ambitious, nor could I have written charges, but I thought I could manage a house (my mother used to call me her right hand), and I was always so fond of little children—­the shyest babies would stretch out their little arms to come to me; when I was a girl, I was half my leisure time nursing in the neighbouring cottages; but I don’t know how it was, when I grew sad and grave—­which I did a year or two after this time—­the little things drew back from me, and I am afraid I lost the knack, though I am just as fond of children as ever, and have a strange yearning at my heart whenever I see a mother with her baby in her arms.  Nay, my dear” (and by a sudden blaze which sprang up from a fall of the unstirred coals, I saw that her eyes were full of tears—­gazing intently on some vision of what might have been), “do you know I dream sometimes that I have a little child—­always the same—­a little girl of about two years old; she never grows older, though I have dreamt about her for many years.  I don’t think I ever