"I wish he did," answered Margery. "I'm always on at him to have a bit of fun when it offers, which isn't often. But pleasuring's pain to him."
"Get's his pleasure different. I met Benny up over, and he says when he's off next year, Mr. Bullstone will very like take on Huntingdon—for his health."
"For his mind's health," answered she, not sorry to breathe her grievance. "He's such a lover of peace that he feels a day or two up there sometimes—beyond sight and sound of his fellow-creatures and the fret of his family—would do his tormented mind a lot of good."
"Fancy! 'The fret of his family'—eh? Takes every sort to make a world, no doubt, and the sort that knows its own luck is the rarest of all."
"I understand, though I don't share, his feeling," explained Margery, who instantly supported Jacob when any other questioned his manner of life. "It's the contrast from the racket and din of home. You're a bachelor and seem like to stop one, so you don't know and never will know what a noisy, bustling house with childer in it exactly means. But to a thinker, like Jacob, there comes a craving to get out of reach of real life sometimes. A spell of silence and his own company always put him in a good mood. He'll go off for the day when he can, on some pretext, but I know it means a day of solitude. Solitude doesn't mean loneliness to him. It's a craving, like some men crave for drink."
"You're not the same though?"
"Not I. I love company and pleasant faces and the news. I shall be at the fair with my children."
"I'm fond of a rally myself. You'll drop on very nice people at them times—folk you only see once a year, very like, and yet are glad to call friends. Pony Fair's a great place for meeting such. Sammy's for it, too, though you wouldn't think so. And never takes a drop too much, if he's got animals to look after. So I always see that he has. But if he's a free man with no responsibility, then he'll let himself go and get blind in no time."
Elsewhere the children discussed a more serious subject. They had heard a stern discourse and considered it.
"I can stand hell better in cold weather than hot," said John Henry. "Makes you sweat in the summer, but warms you when it's frosty."