content, ay, my lad, right happy, so thou’rt a rich man, and can see the world!’ I give ye my word, Jan, the child looked at me as if he understood it all.  You’re wondering, maybe, what made me hope he’d do different to what I’d done.  But, ye see, his mother was just an angel, and I reckoned he’d be half like her.  Then she’d lived with gentlefolks from a child, and knew manners and such like that I never learned.  And for as little as I’d taught myself, he’d at any rate begin where his father left off.  He was all we had.  There seemed no fault in him.  His mother dressed him like a little prince, and his manners were the same.  Ah, we were happy!  Then” —

“Well, Master Swift?” said Jan, for the schoolmaster had paused.

“Can’t ye see the place is empty?” he answered sharply.  “Who takes bite or sup with me but Rufus?  She died.

“I’d have gone mad but for the boy.  All my thought was to make up her loss to him.  A child learns a man to be unselfish, Jan.  I used to think, ’god may well be the very fount of unselfish charity, when He has so many children, so helpless without Him!’ I think He taught me how to do for that boy.  I dressed him, I darned his socks:  what work I couldn’t do I put out, but I had no one in.  When I came in from school, I cleaned myself, and changed my boots, to give him his meals.  Rufus and I eat off the table now, but I give ye my word when he was alive we’d three clean cloths a week, and he’d a pinny every day; and there’s a silver fork and spoon in yon drawer I saved up to buy him, and had his name put on.  I taught him too.  He loved poetry as well as his father.  He could say most of Milton’s ‘Lycidas.’  It was an unlucky thing to have learned him too!  Eh, Jan! we’re poor fools.  I lay awake night after night reconciling my mind to troubles that were never to come, and never dreaming of what was before me.  I thought to myself, ’John Swift, my lad, you’re making yourself a bed of thorns.  As sure as you make your son a gentleman, so sure he’ll look down on his old father when he gets up.  Can ye bear that, John Swift, and her dead, and him all that ye have?’ I didn’t ask myself twice, Jan.  Of course I could bear it.  Would any parent stop his child from being better than himself because he’d be looked down on?  I never heard of one.  ’I want him to think me rough and ignorant,’ says I, ’for I want him to know what’s better.  And I shan’t expect him to think on how I’ve slaved for him, till he’s children of his own, and their mother a lady.  But when I’m dead,’ I says, ’and he stands by my grave, and I can’t shame him no more with my common ways, he’ll say, “The old man did his best for me,” for he has his mother’s feelings.’  I tell ye, Jan, I cried like a child to think of him standing at my burying in a good black coat and a silk scarf like a gentleman, and I no more thought of standing at his than if he was bound to live for