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CHAPTER LX. RICHARD AND HIS FAMILY

As the dinner-hour drew nigh, Richard went to the drawing-room, scrupulously dressed. Lady Ann gave him the coldest of polite recognitions; Theodora was full of a gladness hard to keep within the bounds which fear of her mother counselled; Victoria was scornful, and as impudent as she dared be in the presence of her father; Miss Malliver was utterly wooden, and behaved as if she had never seen him before; Arthur was polite and superior. Things went pretty well, however. Percy, happily, was at Woolwich, pretending to study engineering: of him Richard had learned too much at Oxford.

Theodora and Richard were at once drawn to each other—he prejudiced in her favour by Barbara, she proud of her new, handsome brother. She was a plain, good-natured, good-tempered girl—with red hair, which only her father and mother disliked, and a modest, freckled face, whose smile was genuine and faith-inspiring. Her mother counted her stupid, accepting the judgment of the varnished governess, who saw wonder or beauty or value in nothing her eyes or hands could not reach. Theodora was indeed one of those who, for lack of true teaching, or from the deliberateness of nature, continue children longer than most, but she was not therefore stupid. The aloe takes seven years to blossom, but when it does, its flower may be thirty feet long. Where there is love, there is intellect: at what period it may show itself, matters little. Richard felt he had in her another sister—one for whom he might do something. He talked freely, as became him at his father’s table, and the conversation did not quite flag. If lady Ann said next to nothing, she said nearly as much as usual, and was perfectly civil; Arthur was sullen but not rude; Theodora’s joy made her talk as she had never talked before. A morn of romance had dawned upon her commonplace life. Vixen gave herself to her dinner, and but the shadow of a grimace now and then reminded Richard of the old monkey-phiz.

Having the heart of a poet, the brain of a scientist, and the hands of a workman—hands, that is, made for making, Richard talked so vitally that in most families not one but all would have been interested; and indeed Arthur too would have enjoyed listening, but that he was otherwise occupied. That he had to look unconcerned at his own deposition, while regarding as an intruder the man whose place he had so long in a sense usurped, was not his sorest trial: regarding as a prig the man who talked about things worth talking about, he could not help feeling himself a poor creature, an empty sack, beside the son of the low-born woman. But indeed Richard, brought face to face with life, and taught to meet necessity with labour, had had immeasurable advantages over Arthur.

The younger insisted to himself that his brother could not have the feelings of a gentleman; that he must have poverty-stricken ways of looking at things. He could, it was true, find nothing in his manners, carriage, or speech, unlike a gentleman, but the vulgarity must be there, and he watched to find it. For he was not himself a gentleman yet.

When they went to the drawing-room, and Richard had sung a ballad so as almost to make lady Ann drop a scale or two from her fish-eyes, Arthur went out of the room stung with envy, and not ashamed of it. The thing most alien to the true idea of humanity, is the notion that our well-being lies in surpassing our fellows. We have to rise above ourselves, not above our neighbours; to take all the good of them, not from them, and give them all our good in return. That which cannot be freely shared, can never be possessed. Arthur went to his room with a gnawing at his heart. Not merely must he knock under to the foundling, but confess that the foundling could do most things better than he—was out of sight his superior in accomplishment as well as education.—“But let us see how he rides and shoots!” he thought.

Even Vixen, who had been saying to herself all the time of dinner, “Mean fellow! to come like a fox and steal poor Arthur’s property!”—even she was cowed a little by his singing, and felt for the moment in the presence of her superior.

Sir Wilton was delighted. Here was a son to represent him!—the son of the woman the county had declined to acknowledge! What was lady Ann’s plebeian litter beside this high-bred, modest, self-possessed fellow! He was worthy of his father, by Jove!

He went early to bed, and Richard was not sorry. He too retired early, leaving the rest to talk him over.

How they did it, I do not care to put on record. Theodora said little, for her heart had come awake with a new and lovely sense of gladness and hope.

“If he would but fall in love with Barbara Wylder!” she thought; “—or rather if Barbara would but fall in love with him, for nobody can help falling in love with her, how happy I should be! they are the two I love best in the world!—next to papa and mamma, of course!” she added, being a loyal girl.

The next morning, Richard came upon Arthur shooting at a mark, and both with pistols and rifle beat him thoroughly. But when Arthur began to talk about shooting pheasants, he found in Richard a rooted dislike to killing. This moved Arthur’s contempt.

“Keep it dark,” he said; “you’ll be laughed at if you don’t. My father won’t like it.”

“Why must a man enjoy himself at the expense of joy?” answered Richard. “I pass no judgment upon your sport. I merely say I don’t choose to kill birds. What men may think of me for it, is a matter of indifference to me. I think of them much as they think of a Frenchman or an Italian, who shoots larks and blackbirds and thrushes and nightingales: I don’t see the great difference!”

They strolled into the stable. There stood Miss Brown, looking over the door of her box. She received Richard with glad recognition.

“How comes Miss Brown here?” he asked. “Where can her mistress be?”

“The mare’s at home,” answered Arthur. “I bought her.”

“Oh!” said Richard, and going into the box, lifted her foot and looked at the shoe. Alas, Miss Brown had worn out many shoes since Barbara drove a nail in her hoof! Had there been one of hers there, he would have known it—by a pretty peculiarity in the turn of the point back into the hoof which she called her mark. The mare sniffed about his head in friendly fashion.

“She smells the smithy!” said Arthur to himself.—“Yes; your grandfather’s work.” he remarked. “I should be sorry to see any other man shoe horse of mine!”

“So should I!” answered Richard. “—I wonder why Miss Wylder sold Miss Brown!” he said, after a pause.

“I am not so curious!” rejoined Arthur. “She sold her, and I bought her.”

Neither divined that the animal stood there a sacrifice to Barbara’s love of Richard.

Arthur had given up hope of winning Barbara, but the thought that the bookbinder-fellow might now, as he vulgarly phrased it to himself, go in and win, swelled his heart with a yet fiercer jealousy. “I hate him,” he said in his heart. Yet Arthur was not a bad fellow as fellows go. He was only a man for himself, believing every man must be for himself, and count the man in his way his enemy. He was just a man who had not begun to stop being a devil.

At breakfast lady Ann was almost attentive to her stepson. As it happened they were left alone at the table. Suddenly she addressed him.

“Richard, I have one request to make of you,” she said; “I hope you will grant it me!”

“I will if I can,” he answered; “but I must not promise without knowing what it is.”

“You do not feel bound to please me, I know! I have the misfortune not to be your mother!”

“I feel bound to please you where I can, and shall be more than glad to do so.”

“It is a small thing I am going to ask. I should not have thought of mentioning it, but for the terms you seem upon with Mr. Wingfold.”

“I hope to see him within an hour or so.”

“I thought as much!—Do you happen to remember a small person who came a good deal about the house when you were at work here?”

“If your ladyship means Miss Wylder, I remember her perfectly.”

“It is necessary to let you know, and then I shall leave the matter to your good sense, that Mrs. Wylder, and indeed the girl herself at various times, has behaved to me with such rudeness, that you cannot in ordinary decency have acquaintance with them. I mention it in case Mr. Wingfold should want to take you to see them. They are parishioners of his.”

“I am sorry I must disappoint you,” said Richard. Lady Ann rose with a grey glitter in her eyes.

“Am I to understand you intend calling on the Wylders?” she said.

“I have imperative reasons for calling upon them this very morning,” answered Richard.

“I am sorry you should so immediately show your antagonism!” said lady Ann.

“My obligations to Miss Wylder are such that I must see her the first possible moment.”

“Have you asked your father’s permission?”

“I have not,” answered Richard, and left the room hurriedly.

The next moment he was out of the house: lady Ann might go to his father, and he would gladly avoid the necessity of disobeying him the first morning after his return! He did not know how small was her influence with her husband.

He took the path across the fields, and ran until he was out of sight of Mortgrange.

CHAPTER LXI. HEART TO HEART

When he came to the parsonage, which he had to pass on his way to the Hall, he saw Mr. Wingfold through the open window of the drawing-room, and turned to the door. The parson met him on the threshold.

“Welcome!” he said. “How did you get through your dinner?”

“Better than I expected,” replied Richard. “But this morning my stepmother began feeling my mouth: she would have me promise not to call on the Wylders. They had been rude to her, she said.”

“Come into the drawing-room. A friend of mine is there who will be glad to see you.”

The drawing-room of the parsonage was low and dark, with its two windows close together on the same side. At the farther end stood a lady, seemingly occupied with an engraving on the wall. She did not move when they entered. Wingfold led Richard up to her, then turned without a word, and left the room. Before either knew, they were each in the other’s arms.

Barbara was sobbing. Richard thought he had dared too much and had frightened her.

“I couldn’t help it!” Barbara said pleadingly.

“My life has been a longing for you!” said Richard.

“I have wanted you every day!” said Barbara, and began again to sob, but recovered herself with an effort.

“This will never do!” she cried, laughing through her tears. “I shall go crazy with having you! And I’ve not seen you yet! Let me go, please. I want to look at you!”

Richard released her. She lifted a blushing, tearful face to his. But there was only joy, no pain in her tears; only delight, no shame in her blushes. One glance at the simple, manly face before her, so full of the trust that induces trust, would have satisfied any true woman that she was as safe in his thoughts as in those of her mother. She gazed at him one long silent moment.

“How splendid you are!” she cried, like a wild schoolgirl. “How good of you to grow like that! I wish I could see you on Miss Brown!—What are you going to do, Richard?”

While she spoke, Richard was pasturing his eyes, the two mouths of his soul, on the heavenly meadow of her face; and she for very necessity went on talking, that she might not cry again.

“Are you going back to the bookbinding?” she said.

“I do not know. Sir Wilton—my father hasn’t told me yet what he wants me to do.—Wasn’t it good of him to send me to Oxford?”

“You’ve been at Oxford then all this time?—I suppose he will make an officer of you now!—Not that I care! I am content with whatever contents you!”

“I dare say he will hardly like me to live by my hands!” answered Richard, laughing. “He would count it a degradation! There I shall never be able to think like a gentleman!”

Barbara looked perplexed.

“You don’t mean to say he’s going to treat you just like one of the rest” she exclaimed.

“I really do not know,” answered Richard; “but I think he would hardly enjoy the thought of Sir Richard Lestrange over a bookbinder’s shop in Hammersmith or Brentford!”

“Sir Richard! You do not mean—?”

Her face grew white; her eyes fell; her hand trembled on Richard’s arm.

“What is troubling you, dearest?” he asked, in his turn perplexed.

“I can’t understand it.” she answered.

“Is it possible you do not know, Barbara?” he returned. “I thought Mr. Wingfold must have told you!—Sir Wilton says I am his son that was lost. Indeed there is no doubt of it.”

“Richard! Richard! believe me I didn’t know. Lady Ann told me you were not—”

“How then should I have dared put my arms round you, Barbara?”

“Richard, I care nothing for what the world thinks! I care only for what God thinks.”

“Then, Barbara, you would have married me, believing me base born?”

“Oh Richard! you thought it was knowing who you were that made me—! Richard! Richard! I did not think you could have wronged me so! My father sold Miss Brown because I would not marry your brother and be lady Lestrange. If you had not asked me, and I had been sure it was only because of your birth you wouldn’t, I should have found some way of letting you know I cared no more for that than God himself does. The god of the world is the devil. He has many names, but he’s all the same devil, as Mr. Wingfold says.—I wonder why he never told me!—I’m glad he didn’t. If he had, I shouldn’t be here now!”

“I am very glad too, Barbara; but it wouldn’t have made so much difference: I was only here on my way to you! But suppose it had been as you thought, it was one thing what you would do, and another what I would ask you to do!”

“What I would have done was what you should have believed I would do!”

“You must just pardon me, Barbara: well as I thought I knew you, I did not know you enough!”

“You do now?”

‘“I do.”

There came a silence.

“How long have you known this about yourself, Richard?” said Barbara.

“More than four years.”

“And you never told me!”

“My father wished it kept a secret for a time.”

“Did Mr. Wingfold know?”

“Not till yesterday.”

“Why didn’t he tell me yesterday, then?”

“I think he wouldn’t have told you if he had known all the time.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason that made him leave us together so suddenly—that you might not be hampered by knowing it—that we might understand each other before you knew. I see it all now! It was just like him!”

“Oh, he is a friend!” cried Barbara. “He knows what one is, and so knows what one is thinking!”

A silent embrace followed, and then Barbara said, “You must come and see my mother!”

“Hadn’t you better tell her first?” suggested Richard.

“She knows—knows what you didn’t know—what I’ve been thinking all the time,” rejoined Barbara, with a rosy look of confidence into his eyes.

“She can never have been willing you should marry a tradesman—and one, besides, who—!”

“She knew I would—and that I should have money, else she might not have been willing. I don’t say she likes the idea, but she is determined I shall have the man I love—if he will have me,” she added shyly.

“Did you tell her you—cared for me?”

He could not say loved yet; he felt an earthy pebble beside a celestial sapphire!

“Of course I did, when papa wanted me to have Arthur!—not till then; there was no occasion! I could not tell what your thoughts were, but my own were enough for that.”

Mrs. Wylder was taken with Richard the moment she saw him; and when she heard his story, she was overjoyed, and would scarcely listen to a word about the uncertainty of his prospects. That her Bab should marry the man she loved, and that the alliance should be what the world counted respectable, was enough for her. When Richard told his father what he had done, saying they had fallen in love with each other while yet ignorant of his parentage, a glow of more than satisfaction warmed sir Wilton’s consciousness. It was lovely! Lady Ann was being fooled on all sides!

“Richard has been making good use of his morning!” he said at dinner. “He has already proposed to Miss Wylder and been accepted! Richard is a man of action—a practical fellow!”

Lady Ann did perhaps turn a shade paler, but she smiled. It was not such a blow as it might have been, for she too had given up hope of securing her for Arthur. But it was not pleasant to her that the grandchild of the blacksmith should have Barbara’s money. Theodora was puzzled.

CHAPTER LXII. THE QUARREL

For a few weeks, things went smoothly enough. Not a jar occurred in the feeble harmony, not a questionable cloud appeared above the horizon. The home-weather seemed to have grown settled. Lady Ann was not unfriendly. Richard, having provided himself with tools for the purpose, bound her prayer-book in violet velvet, with her arms cut out in gold on the cover; and she had not seemed altogether ungrateful. Arthur showed no active hostility, made indeed some little fight with himself to behave as a brother ought to a brother he would rather not have found. Far from inseparable, they were yet to be seen together about the place. Vixen had not once made a face to his face; I will not say she had made none at his back. Theodora and he were fast friends. Miss Malliver, now a sort of upper slave to lady Ann, cringed to him.

Arthur readily sold him Miss Brown, and every day she carried him to Barbara. But he took the advice of Wingfold, and was not long from home any day, but much at hand to his father’s call, who had many things for him to do, and was rejoiced to find him, unlike Arthur, both able and ready. He would even send him where a domestic might have done as well; but Richard went with hearty good will. It gladdened him to be of service to the old man. Then a rumour reached his father’s ears, carried to lady Ann by her elderly maid, that Richard had been seen in low company; and he was not long in suspecting the truth of the matter.

Not once before since Richard’s return, had sir Wilton given the Mansons a thought, never doubting his son’s residence at Oxford must have cured him of a merely accidental inclination to such low company, and made evident to him that recognition of such relationship as his to them was an unheard-of impropriety, a sin against social order, a class-treachery.

Almost every day Richard went to Wylder Hall, he had a few minutes with Alice at the parsonage. Neither Barbara nor her lawless, great-hearted mother, would have been pleased to have it otherwise. Barbara treated Alice as a sister, and so did Helen Wingfold, who held that such service as hers must be recompensed with love, and the money thrown in. Their kindness, with her new peace of heart, and plenty of food and fresh air, had made her strong and almost beautiful.

It was Richard’s custom to ride over in the morning, but one day it was more convenient for him to go in the evening, and that same evening it happened that Arthur Manson had gone to see his sister. When Richard, on his way back from the Hall, found him at the parsonage, he proposed to see him home: Miss Brown was a good walker, and if Arthur did not choose to ride all the way, they would ride and walk alternately. Arthur was delighted, and they set out in the dusk on foot, Alice going a little way with them. Richard led Miss Brown, and Alice clung joyously to his arm: but for Richard, she would not have known that human being ever was or could be so happy! The western sky was a smoky red; the stars were coming out; the wind was mild, and seemed to fill her soul with life from the fountain of life, from God himself. For Alice had been learning from Barbara—not to think things, but to feel realities, the reality of real things—to see truths themselves. Often, when Mrs. Wingfold could spare her, Barbara would take her out for a walk. Then sometimes as they walked she would quite forget her presence, and through that very forgetting, Alice learned much. When first she saw Barbara lost in silent joy, and could see nothing to make her look glad, she wondered a moment, then swiftly concluded she must be thinking of God. When she saw her spread out her arms as if to embrace the wind that flowed to meet them, then too she wondered, but presently began to feel what a thing the wind was—how full of something strange and sweet. She began to learn that nothing is dead, that there cannot be a physical abstraction, that nothing exists for the sake of the laws of its phenomena. She did not put it so to herself, I need hardly say; but she was, in a word, learning to feel that the world was alive. Of the three she was the merriest that night as they went together along the quiet road. A little way out of the village, Richard set her on the mare, and walked by her side, leading Miss Brown. Such was the tolerably sufficient foundation for the report that he was seen rollicking with a common-looking lad and a servant girl on the high road, in the immediate vicinity of Wylder Hall.

“He is his father’s son!” reflected lady Ann.

“He’s a chip of the old block!” said sir Wilton to himself. But he did not approve of the openness of the thing. To let such doings be seen was low! Presently fell an ugly light on the affair.

“By Jove!” he said to himself, “it’s the damned Manson girl! I’ll lay my life on it! The fellow is too much of a puritan to flaunt his own foibles in the public eye; but, damn him, he don’t love his father enough not to flaunt his! Dead and buried, the rascal hauls them out of their graves for men to see! It’s all the damned socialism of his mother’s relations! Otherwise the fellow would be all a father could wish! I might have known it! The Armour blood was sure to break out! What business has he with what his father did before he was born! He was nowhere then, the insolent dog! He shall do as I tell him or go about his business—go and herd with the Mansons and all the rest of them if he likes, and be hanged to them!”

He sat in smouldering rage for a while, and then again his thoughts took shape in words, though not in speech.

“How those fools of Wylders will squirm when I cut the rascal off with a shilling, and settle the property on the man the little lady refused! But Dick will never be such a fool! He cannot reconcile his puritanism with such brazen-faced conduct! I shall never make a gentleman of him! He will revert to the original type! It had disappeared in his mother! What’s bred in the damned bone will never out of the damned flesh!”

Richard was at the moment walking with Mr. Wingfold in the rectory garden. They were speaking of what the Lord meant when he said a man must leave all for him. As soon us he entered his father’s room, he saw that something had gone wrong with him.

“What is it, father?” he said.

“Richard, sit down,” said sir Wilton. “I must have a word with you:—What young man and woman were you walking with two nights ago, not far from Wylder Hall?”

“My brother and sister, sir—the Mansons.”

“My God, I thought as much!” cried the baronet, and started to his feet—but sat down again: the fetter of his gout pulled him back. “Hold up your right hand,” he went on—sir Wilton was a magistrate—“and swear by God that you will never more in your life speak one word to either of those—persons, or leave my house at once.”

“Father,” said Richard, his voice trembling a little, “I cannot obey you. To deny my friends and relations, even at your command, would be to forsake my Master. It would be to break the bonds that bind men, God’s children, together.”

“Hold your cursed jargon! Bonds indeed! Is there no bond between you and your father!”

“Believe me, father, I am very sorry, but I cannot help it. I dare not obey you. You have been very kind to me, and I thank you from my heart,—”

“Shut up, you young hypocrite! you have tongue enough for three!—Come, I will give you one chance more! Drop those persons you call your brother and sister, or I drop you.”

“You must drop me, then, father!” said Richard with a sigh.

“Will you do as I tell you?”

“No, sir. I dare not.”

“Then leave the house.”

Richard rose.

“Good-bye, sir,” he said.

“Get out of the house.”

“May I not take my tools, sir?”

“What tools, damn you!”

“I got some to bind lady Ann’s prayer-book.”

“She’s taken him in! By Jove, she’s done him, the fool! She’s been keeping him up to it, to enrage me and get rid of him!” said the baronet to himself.

“What do you want them for?” he asked, a little calmer.

“To work at my trade. If you turn me out, I must go back to that.”

“Damn your soul! it never was, and never will be anything but a tradesman’s! Damn my soul, if I wouldn’t rather make young Manson my heir than you!—No, by Jove, you shall not have your damned tools! Leave the house. You cannot claim a chair-leg in it!”

Richard bowed, and went; got his hat and stick; and walked from the house with about thirty shillings in his pocket. His heart was like a lump of lead, but he was nowise dismayed. He was in no perplexity how to live. Happy the man who knows his hands the gift of God, the providers for his body! I would in especial that teachers of righteousness were able, with St. Paul, to live by their hands! Outside the lodge-gate he paused, and stood in the middle of the road thinking. Thus far he had seen his way, but no farther. To which hand must he turn? Should he go to his grandfather, or to Barbara?

He set out, plodding across the fields, for Wylder Hall. There was no Miss Brown for him now. Miss Wylder, they told him, was in the garden. She sat in a summer-house, reading a story. When she heard his step, she knew, from the very sound of it, that he was discomposed. Never was such a creature for interpreting the signs of the unseen! Her senses were as discriminating as those of wild animals that have not only to find life but to avoid death by the keenness of their wits. She came out, and met him in the dim green air under a wide-spreading yew.

“What is the matter, Richard?” she said, looking in his face with anxiety. “What has gone wrong?”

“My father has turned me out.”

“Turned you out?”

“Yes. I must swear never to speak another word to Alice or Arthur, or go about my business. I went.”

“Of course you did!” cried Barbara, lifting her dainty chin an inch higher.

Then, after a little pause, in which she looked with loving pride straight into his eyes—for was he not a man after her own brave big heart!—she resumed:

“Well, it is no worse for you than before, and ever so much better for me!—What are you going to do, Richard?—There are so many things you could turn to now!”

“Yes, but only one I can do well. I might get fellows to coach, but I should have to wait too long—and then I should have to teach what I thought worth neither the time nor the pay. I prefer to live by my hands, and earn leisure for something else.”

“I like that,” said Barbara. “Will it take you long to get into the way of your old work?”

“I don’t think it will,” answered Richard; “and I believe I shall do better at it now. I was looking at some of it yesterday morning, and was surprised I should have been pleased with it. In myself growing, I have grown to demand better work—better both in idea and execution.”

“It is horrid to have you go,” said Barbara; “but I will think you up to God every day, and dream about you every night, and read about you every book. I will write to you, and you will write to me—and—and”—she was on the point of crying, but would not—“and then the old smell of the leather and the paste will be so nice!”

She broke into a merry laugh, and the crisis was over. They walked together to the smithy. Fierce was the wrath of the blacksmith. But for the presence of Barbara, he would have called his son-in-law ugly names. His anger soon subsided, however, and he laughed at himself for spending indignation on such a man.

“I might have known him by this time!” he said. “—But just let him come near the smithy!” he resumed, and his eyes began to flame again. “He shall know, if he does, what a blacksmith thinks of a baronet!—What are you going to do, my son?”

“Go back to my work.”

“Never to that old-wife-trade?” cried the blacksmith. “Look here, Richard!” he said, and bared his upper arm, “there’s what the anvil does!” Then he bent his shoulders, and began to wheeze. “And there’s what the bookbinding does!” he continued. “No, no; you turn in with me, and we’ll show them a sight!—a gentleman that can make his living with his own hands! The country shall see sir Wilton Lestrange’s heir a blacksmith because he wouldn’t be a snob and deny his own flesh and blood!—‘I saw your son to-day, sir Wilton—at the anvil with his grandfather! What a fine fellow he do be! Lord, how he do make the sparks fly!’—If I had him, the old sinner, he should see sparks that came from somewhere else than the anvil!—You turn in with me, Richard, and do work fit for a man!”

“Grandfather,” answered Richard, “I couldn’t do your work so well as my own.”

“Yes, you could. In six weeks you’ll be a better smith than ever you’d be a bookbinder. There’s no good or bad in that sort of soft thing! I’ll make you a better blacksmith than myself. There! I can’t say fairer!”

“But don’t you think it better not to irritate my father more than I must? I oughtn’t to torment him. As long as I was here he would fancy me braving him. When I am out of sight, he may think of me again and want to see me—as Job said his maker would.”

“I don’t remember,” said Barbara. “Tell me.”

“He says to God—I was reading it the other day—‘I wish you would hide me in the grave till you’ve done being angry with me! Then you would want to see again the creature you had made; you would call me, and I would answer!’ God’s not like that, of course, but my father might be. There is more chance of his getting over it, if I don’t trouble him with sight or sound of me.”

“Well, perhaps you’re right!” said Simon. “Off with you to your woman’s work! and God bless you!”