“Aw, my sweet girl, there’s times an angel can’t be trusted, or so many wouldn’t have lost themselves. It takes a man to know men and all the wickedness mixed up in their flesh and blood. There’s your mother, Denas––God bless her!”
Joan came strolling forward to meet them, her large, handsome face beaming and shining with love and pride. But she was immediately sensitive to the troubled, angry atmosphere in which her husband and child walked, and she looked into John’s face with the inquiry in her eyes.
“Denas is vexed about Roland Tresham, mother.”
“There then, I thought Denas had more sense than to trouble herself or you, father, with the like of him. Your new frock is home, Denas, and pretty enough, my dear. Go and look at it before it be too dim to see.”
Denas was glad to escape to her room, and Penelles turned suddenly silent and said no more until he had smoked another pipe on his own door-step.
Then he went into the cottage and sat down. Joan was by the fire with her knitting in her hand, and softly humming to herself her favourite hymn:
| “When quiet in my house I sit.” |
Penelles let her finish, and then he told her all that he saw and all that he thought and every word he and Denas had spoken. “And I said what was right, didn’t I, Joan?” he asked.
“No words at all are sometimes better than good words, John. When the wicked was before him, even David didn’t dare to say good and right words.”