The men called them out, and together all visited the kennels and listened to Jacob expatiate on the subject of his Irish terriers. Neither Barlow nor his wife liked dogs, but they were patient under the ordeal.
Presently they walked beside the river and, after an early tea, the Huxams started to return home. Mr. Bullstone offered to drive them, but Mrs. Huxam declined and held the exercise would do her husband good. Margery and Jacob accompanied them as far as Shipley Bridge; then they parted, and while the lovers loitered by the river, Margery's family proceeded homeward.
Judith preserved silence and her husband respected it. She had not spoken so much for a long time. They walked through the gracious evening light now roseal on the fields and hedges. The slow miles passed and still Mrs. Huxam spoke not.
Then Barlow lifted his voice as Brent appeared beneath them, stretched like a grey cobweb on the green vale.
"All gone off very nice and pleasant—eh? You've seen and heard nought that wasn't convenient, Judy?"
"I've heard nothing, allowing for the difference between our clear sight and the cloudy view of other Christians," she answered. "Nothing I've heard, but something I've seen that was very ill-convenient indeed, and I'm sorry I did see it."
"Dear me—I'm sorry, too, then," answered he. "Nothing as can't be righted, I hope?"
"The thing can be righted," she answered, "and for that matter I did right it with my own hand; but the fault that committed the thing goes far deeper. It was in the parlour, where I sat with Mrs. Bullstone. And a very nice room too. And on a shelf lay the family Bible and upon it somebody had set another book!"
"Dear, dear," replied Mr. Huxam, displaying more concern than, as a reasonable being, he felt. "That's bad! You never did ought to put any other printed word on a Bible, of course."
"It's hard to think of a live Christian doing so. But he'd laid down a dog book on God's Word; and it went through me like a knife."