Mrs. Gaunt's face beamed with gratified pride and affection.
The chariot came round, and Griffith handed his dame in. He then gave an involuntary sigh, and followed her with a hang-dog look.
She heard the sigh, and saw the look, and laid her hand quickly on his shoulder, and said, gently but coldly, "Stay you at home, my dear. We shall meet at dinner."
"As you will," said he, cheerfully: and they went their several ways. He congratulated himself on her clemency, and his own escape. She went along, sorrowful at having to drink so great a bliss alone; and thought it unkind and stupid of Griffith not to yield with a good grace if he could yield at all; and, indeed, women seem cleverer than men in this, that, when they resign their wills, they do it graciously and not by halves. Perhaps they are more accustomed to knock under; and you know practice makes perfect.
But every smaller feeling was swept away by the preacher, and Mrs. Gaunt came home full of pious and lofty thoughts.
She found her husband seated at the dinner-table, with one turnip before him; and even that was not comestible; for it was his grandfather's watch, with a face about the size of a new-born child's. "Forty-five minutes past one, Kate," said he, ruefully.
"Well, why not bid them serve the dinner?" said she, with an air of consummate indifference.
"What, dine alone o' Sunday? Why, you know I couldn't eat a morsel without you, set opposite."
Mrs. Gaunt smiled affectionately. "Well, then, my dear, we had better order dinner an hour later next Sunday."
"But that will upset the servants, and spoil their Sunday."