Uncle Moses helped. "How long is it since you set eyes on him?"
"Twenty-five years—all of twenty-five years."
Uncle Mo was greatly relieved at hearing this. "Well, but, M'riar—twenty-five years! You're shet of the beggar—clean shet of him! You are that, old girl, legally and factually. But then," said he, "when was you married to him?"
"I've got my lines to show for that, Mo. July six, eighteen twenty-nine."
Uncle Mo repeated the date slowly after her, and then seemed to plunge into a perplexing calculation, very distorting to the natural repose of his face. Touching his finger-tips appeared to make his task easier. After some effort, which ended without clear results, he said:—"What I'm trying to make out is, how long was you and him keeping house? Because it don't figure up. How long should you say?"
"We were together six weeks—no more."
"And you—you never seen him since?"
"Never since. Twenty-five years agone, this last July!" At which Uncle Mo was so confounded that words failed him. His only resource was a long whistle. Aunt M'riar, on the contrary, seemed to acquire narrative powers from hearing her own voice, and continued:—"I hadn't known him a twelvemonth, and I should have been wiser than to listen to him—at my age, over one-and-twenty!"
"But you made him marry you, M'riar?"
"I did that, Mo. And I have the lines and my ring, to show it. But I never told a soul, not even mother. I wouldn't have told her, to be stopped—so bad I was!... What!—Dolly—Dolly's mother? Why, she was just a young child, Dave's age!... How did I come to know him? It was one day in the bar—he came in with Tom Spring, and ordered him a quart of old Kennett. He was dressed like a gentleman, and free with his money...."