“You’ll take her to live with you. She’s a bright little lass, like a ray of sunshine in the house. You wont let her forget her mother or her worthless dad, will you, Jabez? You’ll be taking a wife someday yourself, lad, an’ have childer o’ your own. But you won’t be hard on th’ little lass, will yo’, Jabez?”
And Jabez said she should be as his own.
“She won’t be bout brass, yo know, Jabez,” gasped the dying man, the sweat standing in heads upon his pale brow. “There’s my share i’th’ business, and odds and ends. Yo’ know all about ’em. I’d never no secrets fro’ yo, Jabez, though yo’ wer’ always a bit close, weren’t tha, lad? I’ve left everything to Dorothy an’ made yo’ her guardian an’ th’ executor. I know yo’ll do right bi th’ little ’un. I’m none feared for that. Th’ Tinkers aren’t that sort; but don’t be hard wi’ her. She’s nooan as tough as some, her mother’s bairn, God bless her.”
And so poor Dick was gathered to his fathers and lay in the old churchyard at Holmfirth by the fair, fragile wife’s side in the grim vault of the Tinkers. Not a mill worked in the district as they carried him to his grave. Men and Women “jacked work” with one accord and lined the route from the dead man’s house to the very side of the grave. For Dick with all his faults, perhaps, because of them, was dear to the simple folk of the valley, and many, a tale was told in the village inns, of cheery word and ready jest, and helping hand in time of need; and many a buxom housewife, as she stirred porridge for good man and bairns, smiled sadly and gave a gentle sigh as she saw herself again a sprightly wench chased at Whitsuntide round the ring at “kiss in the ring” Or “choose the lad that you love best,” and found herself a willing captive, but panting and struggling still, whilst Dick saluted the rosy cheek. For at the Sunday School treats at “Whis-sunday,” all classes were on a level, and even the parson himself must run as fast as legs could carry him if tap of maiden greatly daring fell upon his shoulder, or her kerchief dropped at his feet.
Whether it was the necessity of having some other companionship than old Betty for the young niece so solemnly committed to his charge, or whether he was weary of his bachelor solitude and felt the need of a woman’s presence in the old homestead in which he had been born and which he had inherited on his father’s death, certain it is that Jabez Tinker began seriously to think about a wife. He was now nearing his fiftieth year, and the romance of youth—love’s young dream—he sadly told himself was not for him. Perhaps he had never been young; but be that as it may he was now a staid, prosaic man, who looked all his years and more, his whole soul in his business, in parish affairs and in other spheres in which the gentler emotions have no concern. Business was with him as the breath of his nostrils. Had he liked, he could have retired on a fair competence; had he been asked he could have given no solid reason why he should continue to toil and moil and put by money. Dorothy was his nearest relative, though of remoter ones—cousins and half-cousins, agnates and cognates as the Roman lawyers said, he had them by the score. But it certainly was neither for Dorothy nor other relative, near or distant, he spent more and more time in mill and counting-house, planning fresh outlets for the produce of his looms, building additions to the old mill, and watching eagerly every improvement in the machinery of his trade. He did it simply because he must, as a successful lawyer takes briefs upon briefs, or a popular doctor case upon case. And he resolved that in his choice of a bride he would look for money that would buy out Dick’s share in the business, and leave him sole master of Wilberlee mill.
And in this mood his thoughts turned to Martha Thorpe; he scarce knew why, except, perhaps, that he was used to the sight of her Sunday after Sunday, and at the weekly services and social functions of the chapel and Sunday school. All the world knew that Martha would have money, but none the less did all the world—of Holmfirth—gape and exclaim with its “Did yo’ evver? “and its “Aw nivver did,” when the reserved master of Wilberlee was seen, not once or twice, but, in time, Sunday after Sunday, pacing slowly by Martha and Old Split’s side from the chapel gates to the modest home above the shop in Victoria Street. But when it become known that Jabez Tinker actually took his roast beef, and Yorkshire pudding, and apple pie (with cheese) at Splits, the spinsterdom of the village was divided between wrath and scorn.
“Such a letting down to th’ Tinkers,” declared one.
“I’ll never believe it till I see it,” affirmed another.
“It’s money he’s after,” a third alleged.
“He’s enough o’ his own.”