"Mayst thee never find thy desire a curse.

Fear not, lad--I will keep thy counsel." "I knew you would." The subject ceased: my father's manner indicated that he wished it to cease.

He re-lit his pipe, and puffed away, silently and sadly.
Years afterwards, when all that remained of Abel Fletcher was a green mound beside that other mound, in the Friends' burying-ground in St.
Mary's Lane, I learnt--what all Norton Bury, except myself, had long known--that my poor mother, the young, thoughtless creature, whose married life had been so unhappy and so brief, was by birth a "gentlewoman.".