And the curious thing is that, within two years, she did think better of it—for why? That fire had sobered Wheeler more than twenty thousand temperance tracts, and all the Sons of the Phoenix and Bands of Hope rolled into one. He never touched a drop of drink since that day, and Jenny's as happy as her kind ever is. I hear she didn't fret over me more than a month, though perhaps that's only what I deserved, writing to her as I did. And then Amelia she said—'No such harm done then after all.' So she married me.
Now, you see, if I'd listened to Satan and hadn't pulled Wheeler out, I shouldn't have got burned, and I shouldn't have got into the hospital, and I shouldn't have found Amelia again, and then where should I have been? Whereas now, we're farming the same bit of land that my father farmed before us. And if this was a made-up story, Amelia would have had to drowned herself or something, and I should have gone a-weeping and a-wailing for Jenny all my born days; but as it's true and really happened, Amelia and me have been punished enough, I think; for eight years of unhappiness is only a few words of print in a story-book, but when you've got to live them, every day of them, eight years is eight years, as Amelia and I shall remember till our dying day; and eight years unhappiness is enough punishment for most of the wrong things a man can do, or a woman either for that matter.
COALS OF FIRE
ALL my life I've lived on a barge. My father, he worked a barge from London to Tonbridge, and 'twas on a barge I first see the light when my mother's time come. I used to wish sometimes as I could 'ave lived in a cottage with a few bits of flowers in the front, but I think if I'd been put to it I should have chose the barge rather than the finest cottage ever I see. When I come to be grown up and took a husband of my own it was a bargeman I took, of course. He was a good sort always, was my Tom, though not particular about Sundays and churchgoings and such like, as my father always was. It used to be a sorrow to me in my young married days to think as Tom was so far from the Lord, and I used to pray that 'is eyes might be opened and that 'e might be led to know the truth like me, which was vanity on my part, for I've come to see since that like as not 'e was nearer the Lord nor ever I was.
We worked the William and Mary, did Tom and me, and I used to think no one could be 'appier than we was them first two years. Tom was as kind as kind, and never said a hard word to me except when he was in liquor; and as to liftin' his 'and to me, no, never in his life. But after two years we got a little baby of our own, and then I knew as I hadn't known what 'appiness was before. She was such a pretty little thing, with yellow hair, soft and fluffy all over her head, the colour of a new-hatched duck, and blue eyes and dear little hands that I used to kiss a thousand times a day.
My mother had married beneath her, they said, for she'd been to school and been in service in a good family, and she taught me to read and write and cipher in the old days, when I was a little kid along of 'er in the barge. So we named our little kid Mary to be like our boat, and as soon as she was big enough, I taught 'er all my mother had taught me, and when she was about eight year old my Tom's great-uncle James, who was a tinsmith by trade, left us a bit of money—over L 200 it were.
'Not a penny of it shall I spend,' says my Tom when he heard of it; 'we'll send our Mary to school with that, we will; and happen she'll be a lady's-maid and get on in the world.'
So we put her to boarding-school in Maidstone, and it was like tearing the heart out of my body. And she'd been away from us a fortnight, and the barge was like hell without her, Tom said, and I felt it too though I couldn't say it, being a Christian woman; and one night we'd got the barge fast till morning in Stoneham Lock, and we were a-settin' talking about her.
'Don't you fret, old woman,' says Tom, with the tears standin' in his eyes, 'she's better off where she is, and she'll thank us for it some day. She's 'appier where she is,' says 'e, 'nor she would be in this dirty old barge along of us.'