“You don’t really think I would bring my little wife where there was danger?”
“Oh, no! O Georgie, dear, no! It’s only that I am silly,” she said, her thick fair lashes downcast and wet.
“Well, don’t be silly any more. There are troubles enough in life, without manufacturing them out of nothing. See, isn’t this pretty?”
A very old gray church stood in the centre of the level green valley; and this of course had to be entered and examined, the key having been procured at a cottage on the way thither. The whitewashed walls and dusty floor within roused George’s displeasure; and Dulcibel cried out against the great roof-beams as “ugly,” till she found that he counted them worthy of admiration, whereupon she quieted into brief silence.
They found their way then to the river edge, near the church; and Dulcibel would be content with nothing short of an immediate preliminary luncheon.
“Not the sandwiches yet,” she said; “but biscuits. Now don’t say you are not hungry, Georgie dear; for I know you are. I’m almost starving.”
George disposed of a biscuit obediently, and then found himself called upon to read poetry aloud. Not that Dulcibel possessed any ear or soul for poetry; but she knew George loved it, and she was a most dutiful wife. George thoroughly appreciated her wish to please him, though no doubt he would have appreciated still more heartily the discovery of a kindred taste in her. But this was not to be expected; so he only smiled under his tawny moustache, and asked—
“What shall I read?”
“Oh, something short and pretty, dear! Trench’s poems have such nice stories in them sometimes.”
The tawny moustache twitched again.