He found amaze at that.
"She did," said he. "Those cow stalls don't want whitewashing again. They're a bit ramshackle compared with ours at Wenlock Hall, but they're as clean as a new pin. Old Peverell told me the inspector said they'd never been so clean before. She invented it."
Suddenly he took Dorothy's arm.
"Do you know you've done that for me?" he whispered.
"Done what?"
"Given me a wider view of things, taught me to realize other people's feelings as well as my own, shown me what she suffers when she sees me go off to Wenlock, what she suffers when I bring you down here and go out with you every day, leaving her alone."
"But why should she suffer?" asked Dorothy. "She's your mother, she must love you. She must want to see you happy. She must be glad you're going to come into that beautiful place in Somersetshire."
He fell to silence, having no answer to that, yet feeling she somehow had not understood what he had meant.
That night he came to Mary's room to say good-night before he went down to the bedroom he had taken at the Crooked Billet. Always hitherto it had been a knock upon the door, a call of good-night and then her listening to the sound of his footsteps down the thinly carpeted stairs. This time he asked if he might come in.
By the light of her candle, Mary was lying in her bed reading one of the books from a little shelf at her bedside. More than she knew, this request of his startled yet spurred her no less to the swift expediency of what she must do.