"Don't see who can give you better advice, Jonah. I can't for one. Looks to me as if old Cherry's got more sense than I was led to believe. Let them find their own men—only see to it when found that they're sound in wind and limb. Libby's got a cleft palate, and, likely as not, his child will have one. 'Tisn't in reason that a lovesick girl should think for her unborn children; but for his grandchildren a man ought to think if chance offers. Anyway, never give a flaw any opportunity to repeat itself, when you can prevent such a thing. Not enough is done for love of the unborn in this world. 'Tis them we ought to make laws for."
By no means satisfied, Cramphorn presently went to bed, and Myles pursued the subject for a while. Then he too retired, taking the lamp with him, and the blind man knitted on for a space, while a choir of crickets chirruped and sped about upon the hearth.
But though Stapledon went to his chamber, the day was not yet done for him, the theme in his thoughts not yet to be extinguished. Since their trivial quarrel Honor and her husband had been as happy together as man and woman need pray to be, and that dim, dreary shadow which Myles had stared at, Honor shut her eyes upon, might be said to have retreated to a point of absolute disappearance. The ache in the man, that showed at his eyes, had passed like any other pain; the twinge in the woman, revealed not at all, though generally followed by a humorous speech, troubled her no more at this moment. She grew pensive and very self-absorbed; she stared absently through the faces of those who addressed her; she dwelt much with her own thoughts and discoveries.
This night she was not in bed when Myles entered her room, but sat beside the open window, her elbows upon the sill and her face between her hands.
"Myles," she said, "there's a man down in the meadow. I saw him distinctly pass between two of the sleeping cows. Then he drifted into the shadow of the hedge—a man or a ghost."
"A man, sweetheart, though I know you would rather think it something else and so get a new sensation. Pinsent probably, as a matter of prosy fact. I bid him get me some rabbits. Shut the window and come to bed. You'll catch cold."
"No; I'm cold-proof now—so the old wives say when—— Come here a minute, Myles, and sit here and look at the moon and listen to the dor beetles. There will not be many more such nights and such silvery mists this year."
"You can almost see the damp in the air," he said.
"Yes, and down below, with ear to grass, one might hear the soft whisper of the little mushrooms breaking out of Mother Earth, while the fairies dance round them and scatter the dew."
"You're not wise to sit there, dear love."