"I hate everybody; and it's all your fault."
"Well, well; mend your pace; we shall be frozen. And if you hate me, change every garment that you wear. I much fear that you are wet and cold."
This practical thought touched the woman in Grace and softened her a little.
"I wish I could love you, Peter, for it would be better for me and happier for us all if I did. But I never, never shall."
"Well, try to tolerate me—fitfully. Even a fitful toleration is something, and perhaps more beautiful than a fixed and steady flame—just as moonlit clouds are lovelier than the moon herself."
They talked awhile longer, then reached the house. Grace retired immediately to don dry clothes, while Mrs. Malherb spoke with Peter.
"Lord! what a poet was marred when you commenced wool merchant," said she, while he drank a jorum of hot spirits and held his coat to the fire.
"Nay, nay, Annabel, the same man can serve both mistresses. Thus, if I might but come at it, I would weave wool shorn off the sheep in paradise for Grace's tender limbs; and I would clothe her mind also with a robe spun of the best and the most beautiful thoughts to be gleaned from books. But she'll none of me nor my stock-in-trade. 'Tis the weather, not my prayers, that makes her wear flannel next her skin. Yet I told her that I'd gladly be the wether that furnished the wool."
"And what said she?" inquired the lady.
"I will be honest with you," answered Peter. "I will conceal nothing. She replied in one word, 'Baa!' Believe me, Annabel, that never since this mundane egg was hatched did such a maddening maiden appear to torment honest men."