"It's you," she said. "It's you, Adam. You don't need to fear the years. But I do. I'm different, because I've got children. It's for them I'd love to look on, so as I might head off the dangers, if dangers showed!"
"None have less to dread than you in that direction. Wonderful children—healthy, hearty, sensible. You and Jacob have made a very good blend for the next generation, and that's something to be thankful for. If marriage is a lottery—then what are childer? Look at my family. Who'd have dreamed that my fine mother and my good, sane father should have had Samuel, and Minnie, now in her grave, and me—me—only better than Samuel by a hair, and often quite as mad as him! But there it was. The poison was hid away in my mother's family, and they never told father till after he was wedded. A very wicked thing and ought to be criminal—eh? My mother went off her head after Sam was born and had to be put away for a bit. But she recovered and never got queer again."
"I'd like to see you on one of your mad days," she said. "But now it's you telling fibs, not me. Never was a saner man than you; and if you weren't so sane, you'd be sad. But if you're sad, you don't show it. When I'm sad, I can't hide my feelings."
"Much pleasanter not to hide 'em, if you've got somebody close at hand to understand 'em. That's one of the compensations of a good marriage—to share sorrow and halve the weight of it."
She looked at him whimsically.
"Sounds all right," she said. "Perhaps, after all, there's some things we married ones know better than you that bide single."
"For certain. Practice knocks the bottom out of a lot of fine theories."
"The things that you can share with another person don't amount to much," she told him. "The sorrow that can be shared, and so lessened, is only small. If one of my children was to die, would it make it better for me because Jacob took on? No."
A child appeared at this moment and Auna approached from the abode of Mr. Marydrew. Her father's movements were not often hidden from the little girl and she was now about to plunge down the woody lane under Shipley Tor by which he must soon return.
"And how's old Billy, my duck?" asked Margery.