Suffering was a life's habit with him, and
its fruit in this instance that which (spite of moral commonplace)
it least often bears--self-conquest.
'You haven't told me yet,' he said, with quiet disregard of her
irrelevancies, 'whether or not her father's name was Joseph
Snowdon.'
'There's no call to hide it. That was his name. I've got letters of
his writin'. "J. J. Snowdon" stands at the end, plain enough. And he
was your son, was he?'
'He was. But have you any reason to think he's dead?'
'Dead! I never heard as he was. But then I never heard as he was
livin', neither. When his wife went, poor thing--an' it was a
chill on the liver, they said; it took her very sudden--he says to
me, "Mrs. Peckover," he says, "I know you for a motherly woman"--
just like that--see?--"I know you for a motherly woman," he
says, "an' the idea I have in my 'ed is as I should like to leave
Janey in your care, 'cause," he says, "I've got work in Birmingham,
an' I don't see how I'm to take her with me. Understand me?" he
says. "Oh!" I says--not feelin' quite sure what I'd ought to do--
see? "Oh!" I says. "Yes," he says; "an' between you an' me," he
says, "there won't be no misunderstanding.
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