“It’s strange how a man let’s his tongue wag now and again as if he’d got the universe stuck on the end of a common fork.”
“Or at the end of a knitting needle, yes, I know,” laughed Caroline, brushing the crumbs from her lap. Then she bent her head, patted her lips, and regurgitated with a gesture of apology—just like a lady. “But what are you saying? If there is love between you there is faithfulness, if there is no love there is no fidelity.”
He bit a mouthful off the cake at last.
“Maybe true, but you must have respect for the beliefs of others....”
“How can you if they don’t fit in with your own?”
“Or there is sorrow.” He bolted the rest of his cake. “O you are right, I daresay, Caroline, no doubt; it’s right, I know, but is it reasonable?”
“There are afflictions,” she said, “which time will cure, so they don’t matter; but there are others which time only aggravates, so what can we do? I daresay it’s different with a man, but a woman, you know, grasps at what she wants. That sounds reasonable, but you don’t think it’s right?”
In the cold whistling sky a patch of sunset had now begun to settle in its proper quarter, but as frigid and unconvincing as a stage fireplace. Pettigrove sat with his great hands clasped between his knees. Perhaps she grew tired of watching the back of him; she rose to go, but she said gently enough: “Come in to-night, I want to tell you something.”
“I will, Caroline.”
Later, when he reached home, he found two little nieces had arrived, children of some relatives who lived a dozen miles away. A passing farmer had dropped them at Tull; their parents were coming a day later to spend Christmas with the Pettigroves.