Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/257

“To go back to the beginning—if one must—there were two women in the parish when I was a child who - were tos certain extent rivals in good looks. Never mind particulars, but in consequence of this they were at daggers - drawn, and they did not love each other any better when one of them tempted the other’s lover away from her and married him. He was a young man of the name of Winter, and in due time they had a son.

The other woman did not marry for many years; but when she was about thirty a quiet man named Palmley asked her to be his wife, and she accepted him. You don’t mind when the Palmleys were Longpuddle folk, but I do well. She had a son also, who was, of course, nine or ten years younger than the son of the firat. The child proved to be of rather weak intellect, thongh his mother loved him as the apple of her eye.

“This woman’s husband died when the child was eight years old, and left his widow and boy in poverty. Her former rival, also a widow now, but fairly well provided for, offered for pity’s sake to take the child as errand - boy, smail as he was, her own son, Jack, being hard upon seventeen. Her poor neighbor conld do no better than let the child go there. And to the richer woman’s house little Palmley straightway went.

“Well, in some way or other—how, it was never exactly known-—-the thriving woman, Mrs. Winter,