"No, love; I shall never be 'patriarch of the valley,' as Phineas used to call it. The yew-hedge is too thick for me, eh, Phineas?"
"No!" cried Ursula—we had told her this little incident of our boyhood—"you have got half through it already. Everybody in Norton Bury knows and respects you. I am sure, Phineas, you might have heard a pin fall at the meeting last night when he spoke against hanging the Luddites. And such a shout as rose when he ended—oh, how proud I was!"
"Of the shout, love?"
"Nonsense!—but of the cause of it. Proud to see my husband defending the poor and the oppressed—proud to see him honoured and looked up to, more and more every year, till—"
"Till it may come at last to the prophecy in your birthday verse—'Her husband is known in the gates; he sitteth among the elders of the land.'"
Mrs. Halifax laughed at me for reminding her of this, but allowed that she would not dislike its being fulfilled.
"And it will be too. He is already 'known in the gates'; known far and near. Think how many of our neighbours come to John to settle their differences, instead of going to law! And how many poachers has he not persuaded out of their dishonest—"
"Illegal," corrected John.
"Well, their illegal ways, and made decent, respectable men of them! Then, see how he is consulted, and his opinion followed, by rich folk as well as poor folk, all about the neighbourhood. I am sure John is as popular, and has as much influence, as many a member of parliament."
John smiled with an amused twitch about his mouth, but he said nothing. He rarely did say anything about himself—not even in his own household. The glory of his life was its unconsciousness—like our own silent Severn, however broad and grand its current might be, that course seemed the natural channel into which it flowed.