“Least said soonest mended then.”
“For your wife’s sake, Ned.”
“Leave her out, please. I’m in your debt and I shan’t forget it.”
They met some women returning to the works and lied to them. All expressed great concern. Then Ned brought Kellock to his rooms and begged him to drink some spirits which he refused to do.
“Mind we tell the same tale about this,” said Jordan. “I fell in and you grabbed me from the bank and brought me ashore. After all it’s the truth, so far as it goes.”
Dingle agreed and then returned to his work; while the injured man, though in considerable pain, only waited to change his clothes and then hastened back to the Mill, to explain his accident and be chaffed for his carelessness.
CHAPTER IX
THE OLD PRIORY
There was none to drag up the melancholy blossoms of Medora’s woe and display the fact that they had no roots; but she kept them alive nevertheless; and since she was tickled to persist in folly by the increasing interest created from her alleged sufferings, she woke up to find those sufferings real at last. She had now earned a great deal of pity and won a reputation for patience and endurance. She had also awakened a certain measure of feeling against Ned, which was inevitable, and now conditions which she had implied, knowing at the bottom of her heart they did not exist, began to develop in reality. The man was not built to watch Medora’s histrionics in patience for ever, and she found him growing harsh and rough.