So still she lay, thinking it all out with thoughts that knew no words to hamper them, that when at last she fell asleep, it was as one passing through the hanging of a curtain that just fell into its concealing folds behind her as she went.
II
"I've told the old man," Mrs. Peverell informed Mary the next morning. "Not all of it, I haven't. Men don't understand what beant just so. He can't abide what's dropped in the farmyard comin' up. ''Tis wheat,' I tell 'en. ''Tain't crops,' says he. ''Twill make a bag of seed,' I says. 'The ground weren't prepared for it,' says he. That's men. Mebbe they're right. 'Nature may have her plan,' I tell 'en, 'but God have his accidents.' 'I can't grow nawthing by accident,' says he. 'You can't,' says I, 'but afore you came, that's the very way they did grow and I guess there's as much rule about accidents as there is of following peas with wheat.' He looks at me then and he says no more, which is good as sayin'--'You women be daft things,' for he picks up his hat and goes out and the understandin' doant come back into his eyes afore he feels the tilled earth under his feet."
So Mr. Peverell knew that in certain time Mary was going to have a baby. He looked at her shyly when next they met. It was in the orchard sloping down the hill that drops to the towpath of the canal. He was calculating the yield of apples, just showing their green and red, and she had come to tell him that the midday meal was ready.
"Thank you, ma'am," said he, when he had always called her "Miss" before. This was the hedge, the boundary of that tilled and cultivated field his mind had placed her in. Beyond that limit, as Mrs. Peverell had said, he would not understand. With a childish simplicity he had accepted all that his wife had told him. She had appeased his need for understanding. Perfectly satisfied, he asked for no more.
"Are you going to give me work to do?" she asked as they walked back together to the house. "Real work, I mean. I can work and I'm so interested."
"Work won't be easy for the likes of you," said he.
"No, but there are things I could do. Things that aren't quite so laborious as others. I could milk the cows, couldn't I? If once I got the trick of it, it would be easy enough, wouldn't it?"
"Women beant bad milkers," he agreed with encouragement. "There's no harm in 'ee tryin'."
"When could I begin?"