He looked at his wife and she nodded and wiped her spectacles but said nothing. Still he fenced with the subject, though she knew to what he was coming.
"How is it you sleep so bad nowadays?" he asked. "I'll tell you, since you don't know. For this reason, because the residence faces different from the old home, and there's a lot more light and air in our present chamber, and the noise of the wild birds singing of a morning strikes in upon you. In our old bedroom we were much more favourably situated, and custom is everything, Judy, and I very much doubt if you can sleep in one room for forty years and more and ever take kindly to another. And I'll be bold to say that if you was back in our old room you'd know sleep again and wake fresh as the dew on the fleece. All of which only points one way."
"Jeremy was saying not so long ago that he felt to be in a good deal of need of change," murmured Mrs. Huxam. "Not grumbling, or anything like that; but down-daunted and weary. He's getting to look too old for his years in my opinion. Patient and sensible and no temper, but a bit under the weather."
"As we all are when we're over-weighted," answered Barlow. "And if he wants a change, and Jane wants a bit of peace and quiet against April, then I say to you in all seriousness that it's well within our power to let 'em have a change."
"Where to?"
"To the residence! Let 'em come here for a few months, and he can do the garden and Jane can look after her family; and you and me will go back to town. I feel, for my own part, that it would do me a power of good, because messing with rose-bushes and French runner beans—after all it's not man's work for a man like me. But I'm not putting myself forward. I'm thinking a lot more about you, and I well know time's hanging terrible heavy on your hands, else you wouldn't do such a lot of reading and look so wisht over it."
"You voice a good bit that's in my own mind. You can think too much. I think too much; and thought often takes you into places where the spirit had best not to be. We'll make it a matter of prayer if you're in earnest."
"I have been making it a matter of prayer since Christmas," he replied. "I've been taking the thing to the Throne ever since I knew the game was up, so far as Jeremy was concerned. And it wasn't until the prayer was answered that I've broached it to you. I see my way very clear indeed if you do. But your word's my law now as always. The only problem that rose before me was this house, and that won't run away because we go back to the post-office in the fulness of our strength. Put them in here for a few months, and then, when the Lord's solved the position so far as they're concerned, we can let it for the summer, furnished, for very fair money indeed."
"It's almost too good to be true in my opinion," she said.
"Far from it," he assured her. "It can come true in rather less than no time if you think it ought."