Contributed by GABRIEL BETTEREDGE

I am the person (as you remember no doubt) who led the way in these

pages, and opened the story. I am also the person who is left behind, as

it were, to close the story up.

Let nobody suppose that I have any last words to say here concerning the

Indian Diamond. I hold that unlucky jewel in abhorrence--and I refer you

to other authority than mine, for such news of the Moonstone as you may,

at the present time, be expected to receive. My purpose, in this place,

is to state a fact in the history of the family, which has been passed

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over by everybody, and which I won't allow to be disrespectfully

smothered up in that way. The fact to which I allude is--the marriage of

Miss Rachel and Mr. Franklin Blake. This interesting event took place at

our house in Yorkshire, on Tuesday, October ninth, eighteen hundred and

forty-nine. I had a new suit of clothes on the occasion. And the married

couple went to spend the honeymoon in Scotland.

Family festivals having been rare enough at our house, since my poor

mistress's death, I own--on this occasion of the wedding--to having

(towards the latter part of the day) taken a drop too much on the

strength of it.

If you have ever done the same sort of thing yourself you will

understand and feel for me. If you have not, you will very likely say,

"Disgusting old man! why does he tell us this?" The reason why is now to

come.

Having, then, taken my drop (bless you! you have got your favourite

vice, too; only your vice isn't mine, and mine isn't yours), I next

applied the one infallible remedy--that remedy being, as you know,

ROBINSON CRUSOE. Where I opened that unrivalled book, I can't say. Where

the lines of print at last left off running into each other, I know,

however, perfectly well. It was at page three hundred and eighteen--a

domestic bit concerning Robinson Crusoe's marriage, as follows: "With those Thoughts, I considered my new Engagement, that I had a Wife

"--(Observe! so had Mr. Franklin!)--"one Child born"--(Observe again!

that might yet be Mr. Franklin's case, too!)--"and my Wife then"--What

Robinson Crusoe's wife did, or did not do, "then," I felt no desire to

discover. I scored the bit about the Child with my pencil, and put a

morsel of paper for a mark to keep the place; "Lie you there," I said,

"till the marriage of Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel is some months

older--and then we'll see!"




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