“I’m dazed,” he told her. “I scarce know what I’ve been doing since breakfast. Here’s your children coming back from Sunday school. I’ll be gone. It’s a bad job—an ugly, cruel job; but grasp hold of this tight, and whether you tell or whether you do not tell, remember the fault weren’t mine. I never treated her bad, not yet bullied her, nor played tyrant upon her; and if she said I did, she was a liar; and if ever I handled her rough, I was sorry after; and the worst ever I did weren’t a twentieth part of what she deserved.”
“I know all that,” said Lydia; then the children clattered down the passage with shrill questions: “Be the baby come?” “Be it a boy?” “Oh, say ’tis a boy, Aunt Lydia!”
Ned went off through the orchards, while his mother-in-law, scarce knowing what she did, gave the children their tea.
Under the trees Mr. Dolbear padded up and down. He was in no fear for Mary, but suffering the extremity of anxiety as to the sex of the coming child.
Ned told him the news.
“My wife’s run away from me, Tom,” he said.
“Have she? Fancy! The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the Name. I never did like Medora, and you’ll bear me out. Where’s she run then?”
“I don’t know. She’s gone with Jordan Kellock, the vatman.”
“God’ll see to it—trust Him, and don’t take the law in your own hands.”
They talked for ten minutes; then a child appeared at the gate by the house. It was Milly, Mr. Dolbear’s favourite.