"No, no!" she said, pushing it from her; "your word is enough. I don't want to see the letter."
She hid her face in her shaking hands.
"I was always true to you," continued Jim, "in heart at least; and now I want to know if there is any reason why you and me should not be wed after all. I have got money enough, and I can wed you and give you a nice home as soon as ever the banns are read, and there'll be a corner for Grannie too, by our fireside. Come, Alison, is there any reason, any impediment? as they say in the marriage service. There aint really any other feller, is there, Ally? That was a sort of way to cheat me, Ally; wasn't it, darlin'?"
"Oh, Jim, yes, yes," cried Alison. "I always loved you with all my heart. I loved you more than ever the day I gave you up, but I was proud, and I misunderstood, and—and—oh, I can say no more; but I love you, Jim, I love you. Oh, my heart is like to burst, but it is all happiness now, for I love you so well—so true—so very, very dearly."
"Then that's all right," he answered solemnly. He took her into his arms there and then and held her fast to his beating heart. They kissed each other many times.
Alison and Jim were married, and Grannie went to live with them. She was indispensable to the brightness of their home, and even more indispensable to the success of their little shop; for Grannie had a natural turn for business, and if her eyes were the kindest in all the world, they were also the sharpest to detect the least thing not perfectly straight in those with whom she had to deal. So the shop, started on thoroughly business principles, flourished well. And the young pair were happy, and the other children by and by made a good start in the world, and Grannie's face beamed more and more lovingly as the years went on, but never to her dying day did she reveal the secret of her visit to the workhouse.
"It was the one piece of bad luck in all my happy life," she was wont to murmur to herself, then she would smile and perk up her little figure. "Lord knows, I needn't ha' been frighted," she would add; "comin' o' the breed of the Phippses and Simpsons, I might ha' known it wouldn't last—the luck o' the family bein' wot it is."
THE END