argument. He was a simple man with a soft heart and no brains worth naming.
Most people laughed at him and loved him. As sure as he went to Penzance on
market-day, he was cordially greeted and made much of, and robbed. People
suspected that his shrewd, black-eyed niece stood between him and absolute
misfortune. She never let him go to market without her if she could help
it; for, on those infrequent occasions when he jogged to town with his gray
horse and cart alone, he always went with a great trust of the world in his
heart and endeavored to conduct the sale of farm produce in the spirit of
Christianity, which was magnificent but not business. Mr. Chirgwin's simple
theories had kept him a poor man; yet the discovery, often repeated, that
his knowledge of human nature was bad, never imbittered him, and he mildly
persisted in his pernicious system of trusting everybody until he found he
could not; unlike his neighbors who trusted nobody until they found that
they could. The farmer had blazed with indignation when Joe Noy flung over
Mary Chirgwin because she would not become a Luke Gospeler. But the matter
was now blown over, for the jilted girl, though the secret bitterness of
her sorrow still bred much gall in her bosom, never paraded it or showed a
shadow of it in her dark face. Uncle Thomas greatly admired Mary and even
feared her; but he loved Joan, for she was like her dead mother outwardly
and like himself in character: a right Chirgwin, loving sunshine and
happiness, herself sunshiny and happy.

"'Pears I've comed the wrong day, Joan," he said presently, when Mrs.
Tregenza's back was turned, "but now I be here, you must do with me as you
can."

"Mother's gwaine to town wi' Tom bimebye; then me an' you'll have a talk,
uncle, wi'out nothin' to let us. You'm lookin' braave, me auld dear."

He liked a compliment, and anticipated pleasure from a quiet afternoon with