"Oh, 'tis a long story, dear, and you wouldn't care for it at all. You would? Well! well! there's no harm that I know of in speaking of it. I've nothing to be ashamed of. I had a niece, Master Jack, and a dearer one never was, nor married to a finer young man. But they went out West, and he died, and left her with a baby. I wrote again and again, begging her to come home, but she was doing well, she said, and felt to stay, and had friends there, and all. Oh, dear! and last year—a year ago it is now, she died." Mrs. Beadle drew out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. "She died, my dear; and—I didn't ought to speak of this, Master Jack, it do upset me so—I don't know where the child is to this day."
"Her child?" asked Jack, with a guilty consciousness of his ears being red.
"My own dear niece Martha's child!" repeated the good woman sorrowfully. "A boy it was, as should be seven years old by this time. I've wrote, and I've wrote, but no answer could I get. And whether he is dead, too, or whether his father's people have him, or what, is darkness to me."
"The brute!" exclaimed Jack Ferrers vehemently. "The cold-hearted, odious brute!"
"What is it, my dear?" cried Mrs. Beadle, drying her tears, and looking with alarm at the pony. "His tail over the reins, is it? Well, he will do that, but 'tis only play. He means no harm."
"Oh, I know!" cried Jack in confusion. "I didn't mean—that is—and is that all the relatives you have, Biddy?"
"Why, boys do love questions, don't they?" the good woman said. "I have a nephew living, Master Jack; and if you guessed from now till Sunday week, you never would guess his name."
"Solomon Grundy" rose to Jack's lips, he could not in the least tell why. He did his best to look unconscious, but it was perhaps fortunate that Mrs. Beadle was so absorbed in her own troubled thoughts that she did not look at him.
"Who is it?" he asked. "Do tell me. Biddy! Is it any one I ever heard of?"
"Hush, my dear! don't tell a soul that I mentioned it. I am not one to force myself on them as has got up in the world, and think honest service a disgrace. It's Ephraim Loftus!"