“Mr. Holmes, will you return thanks?”
My father glanced at the curate, who waved to him a somewhat condescending assent, so the last word at that eventful feast, and that a heartfelt and eloquent word of thanksgiving to the Giver of all good gifts, was spoken by my dear and honoured father.
And now, dear reader, we must part company we have journeyed together through strange adventures, and my story is done. “Always have your peroration ready, for you never know how soon you may need it,” was sound advice. But I think this tale needs no peroration, for if I have succeeded even faintly, in giving a true insight into the characters of Miriam and Ruth and Jim—I’ll say nought of myself—you may close this little volume on the full assurance that the lives united on that happy September day had their fair share of the sunshine of life.
I am the father of two fine sons and a daughter, who bids fair to be nearly as good to look upon as my Miriam, and unite to six sturdy little Haigh lads and one bright maiden, who, I fear me, will prove as great a tyrant as Jim declares our Ruth to be.
As for Enoch Hoyle, that worthy pillar of Pole Moor, he began to put in a vast amount of time at Wrigley Mill Fold, and it was openly said all through Diggle that he offered to Mary his stout old heart and not quite empty hand. But all the information on this point that Jim could glean was to be gathered from Mary’s trite remark that “there’s no fooil like an old fooil.”
[THE END.]