Brenton pulled himself up short, horrified at the abyss upon whose verge he found himself. He, the priest, vowed, despite his honest doubts, to the preaching of God's holy word and commandment, to be applying questions such as that to the marriage ties between himself and Catie! For, quite unconsciously, the swift revulsion flung him back upon the use of the old, almost forgotten name.
No marriage, honestly entered into, honestly lived out, could be a machine-wrought manacle. If it seemed one, then the greater shame to those who wore it, the greater shame to him, the husband, that his more crass nature could throw doubt upon the fineness of the texture of the bond. Besides, Kathryn was his wife, his lawful, loyal, albeit sometimes uncomprehending, wife. That fact alone was quite sufficient. Beyond it, there was no need to probe. Kathryn and he were one; the sacred seal of joint parentage was soon to be placed upon their union, rendering it more permanent, more holy. If they had their trivial disagreements, what then? It was the place of him, the stronger, the steadier, to end them for all time. Even while they lasted, he was a priest and bound to patient service, not a fiction-monger, like little Prather, nosing about in every situation that arose, with the faint hope of picking up an occasional crumb of melodramatic copy. He was a priest, a man not so much of words as of holy life. And the way to priestly holiness did not lie along the hummocks of domestic squabbles.
Brenton lifted his head, shut his teeth a little sidewise, straightened his shoulders, and went in search of Kathryn.
But Kathryn, going off to bed, had locked her door behind her. However, had the priestly eye been properly applied to the keyhole, it would have made out the reassuring fact that Kathryn, sleeping, showed the unruffled countenance of a contented babe.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In the fulness of time, the Brenton baby came, a sturdy little youngster who, from the start, kicked lustily and lifted up his voice out of a pair of brazen lungs that made the domestic welkin ring. Kathryn, somewhat weak and very languid, opened her eyes listlessly, when the nurse approached the bed, the new-born heir, swaddled and shrieking, in her capable arms.
"Here's the baby, Mrs. Brenton!" she announced, and there was as much triumph in her tone as if it were the first child of her forty years' experience in nursing, not the last.
"Thank you, nurse. I'm sure she's very nice. And will you please tell Mr. Brenton," for Scott still was rigidly barred out from the room; "that I think we'll name her Katharine—"
"But, ma'am—"