“Ah, that is well.” Agatha breathed more freely. She was so glad to hide herself under any roof that was her own. And perhaps a vague thought crept up, that some time—not for days yet, but when she could bend her pride to soften him—when they were living quite alone together—all might be gradually explained, nay, healed, between her and her husband. She was on the whole not sorry to go “home.”
“I see you two are quite agreed,” laughed Harrie. “Marvellous union, Mrs. Locke Harper. You'll be really a pattern couple soon, and throw Duke and me cruelly in the shade. Now, dress like lightning, and I'll drive you and the children over to grandpapa's. Most likely well meet Pa and Nathanael somewhere about the town.”
But, with the general vagueness of the Dugdale habits, that meeting did not arrive, nor was Mr. Harper anywhere to be seen.
“I dare say he is at the cottage, where I was bid not to take you upon any account. Charming little mysteries, I suppose, attendant on bringing home the bride. Very nice. Heigh-ho! I remember how happy I was when my poor dear Duke brought me home for the first time!”
“Where was that?” They were dashing over the moors, Agatha sitting rather silent, and Harrie's tongue galloping as fast as Dunce, her steed. Little Brian was perched on his mother's knee, holding the reins—a baby Phaeton, though with small danger of setting the world on fire—at least just yet.
“Where was it, my dear? Why, to the same old house we live in, empty and gloomy then, though it's full enough now. And I had been married—(hold your tongues, Fred and Gus! you can't have the whip, simpletons!)—married only three weeks, and it was queer coming back to my native place; and my father was rather cross that I had married Duke at all, and—I was foolish enough to cry.”
Here Harrie laughed, and gave Dunce a lash that quite discomposed his pony faculties, and made Brian scream with delight.
“And what did your husband say?”
“Say? Nothing. He never speaks when he's vexed or hurt; only, a little while afterwards he came beside me, and said something about my being such a young girl, so gay-hearted and pretty—(bah!—though I was pretty then)—too young, he said, to marry such an elderly man, etc. etc. etc.”
“And what did you say?”