"And you never told your wife?"
"No, she has a good deal to hear, Mr. Valentine, besides that, and I thought I'd tell it her all at once."
Valentine saw that he was expected to ask a question here.
"What, Swanny, is something else coming off then?"
"Ay, sir; you see, Mr. Melcombe, I'm lost here, I'm ekal to something better, Mr. Mortimer knows it as well as I do. He's said as much to me more than once. What he'll do without me I'm sure I don't know, but I know well enough he'll never get such another."
"No, I don't suppose he will."
"There ain't such a gardener going—not for his weight in gold. But I'm off in the spring. I've done a'most all but break it to my wife. It's Joseph that's helping me, and for hindrance I've got a Methodist chapel and a boarded floor. There's boarded floors to her kitchen, and back kitchen, as Mr. Mortimer put in for her, because she was so rheumatic, they air what she chiefly vally's the place for. But at some of them small West India islands there's a fine opening, Joey says, for a man with a headpiece as can cultivate, and knows what crops require, and I ought to go. I'm only sixty-one or thereabouts. You'll not say anything about it, sir," he continued, as the twins, who were in the garden, came towards Valentine.
They brought him in triumph to the schoolroom, which was decorated, and full of the wedding presents the children had made for their father and the dear mamma.
"And you'll remember," said Bertram, "how you promised us—promised us with all your might, that we should come to Melcombe."
"Yes, all of us," proceeded Anastasia; "he said the little ones too."