He could see his wife through the glass beyond himself, and the face that she turned to him was clouded, too.
“Nay, what...” she began quickly, her voice troubled and sore. “That’s by with, surely? You promised you’d let it bide.”
Their eyes met in the glass, and he threw her a repentant nod. “Ay, that’s so, and I mean to hold by it an’ all.” He drew a long breath, squaring his shoulders as if to an enemy threatening his peace. For a long moment he went on staring thoughtfully at himself, and when he spoke again it was with an obvious attempt at ease. “I reckon I don’t favour the old dad much in the face; nay, nor Bob, neither, for the matter o’ that.”
“You don’t take after him no way,” Agnes answered, turning back. She gave a little sigh of relief as she stared again at the marsh. “Folk’d be hard put to it to tell you’re the same breed. He’s the light sort, for one thing, and you’re that dark. He’s fond of music and terble forgetful-like, and you’re that set on your job, and wi’ no more tune than an old bull.”
Thomas laughed his good-tempered laugh.
“I’m not much in the singing line, I doubt, but I’m real fond o’ music, all the same. He was for ever trying to learn me the fiddle, but it wasn’t no use. All the music I’ve gitten is in my heels.”
“Ay, well, you’re a bonny dancer—I’ll give you that,” she agreed. “So was Bob, poor lad, afore he got wed, but he’s not much to crack on, nowadays, I doubt. All the spring’ll be out on him, by now. He’s been plagued and bothered over long.”
“A bad missis’ll do for a man quicker than a green Christmas,” Thomas said. “There’s nobbut once he’ll have rued, I reckon, and that’s all the time. He’d plenty o’ warning an’ all, if he’d nobbut took it, the daft fool! I never see such a time as she give him when they were courting—Marget an’ Bob. Same as cat and mouse it were, only worse, and yet he couldn’t frame to bide away. Come to that, he’d say we were a while about it, ourselves....”
He saw her stiffen again as he said that, but this time she did not turn. Only the back of her smooth head was visible in the glass. “Ay, well, I’m one as looks afore they leap,” she answered shortly, on a sharp note.... “Hadn’t you best be thinking o’ making a move?”
“It’s over soon, I tell ye ... there’s no sign o’ them yet.” Suddenly he left the glass and came over to her side, leaning his arms along the window-frame. All the windows in the kitchen were new, their sashes gleaming with fresh paint, broad windows that filled the place with pictures and the sun. “Seems like it couldn’t be true,” he went on, looking down at her cheek where it touched the stuff of his sleeve—“you an’ me wed and at the farm, and the old dad coming back, after all. Seems like I’m only dreaming it’s come true.... I doubt he’ll want seeing to a bit, at first. He’s not as young as he was, and he’s terble down. You an’ me we mun do for him all we can.”