Jack, he turned to me, and his face was so that I should have been
afraid to have been along of him in a lonely place.
'This is your doings,' says he, 'and all that pack of lies you told
me was out of your own wicked head.'
He had got his arm round her, and was holding on as if she was
something worth having, instead of a silly girl in a frock three
year old.
'I don't know what you mean, I'm sure,' I said; 'it was only a
joke.'
'A joke!' says he. 'Lies, I call it, and I know they're lies by the
very touch of her in my arm here.'
'Oh, well!' I said, 'if you can't take joking better than this, it's
the last time I'll ever try joking with you.'
And I walked out of the church, and the other folks who had run up
to see what was the matter come out with me. And they two was left
alone.
I suppose it was only human nature that, as I come round the church,
I should get on the top of a tombstone and look in to see what they
was doing. It was the little window where a pane was broken by a
stone last summer, and so I heard what they was saying. He was
trying to tell her what I had told him--quite as much for her own
good as for mine, as you have seen; but she didn't seem to want to
listen.
'Oh, never mind all that now, Jack,' she says, with arms round his
neck. 'What does it matter about a silly joke now that I have got
you, and it's all right betwixt us?'
I thought it my duty to go straight home and tell uncle she was up
in the church, kissing and cuddling with Jack Halibut; and he took
his stick and started off after her.
But he met them at the garden gate, and Jack, he came forward, and
he says--
'Mr. Kenworthy, I have had hard thoughts of you this three year, but
I see you was right, for if I had never gone away, I should never
have been able to keep my little girl as she should be kept, and as
I can now, thanks be! and I should never have known how dear she has
loved me this three year.'
And uncle, like the soft-hearted old thing he is, he holds out his
hands, and he says, 'God bless you, my boy, it was for your own good
and hers.'
And they went in to supper.
As for me, I went to bed. I had had all the supper I wanted. And
uncle has never been the same to me since, though I'm sure I tried
to act for the best.