"If only what? All the same, I know. There's compensations against childer, David. Leave that and go on feeling grateful for her goodness; and--and wake up to a bit more too."
She spoke suddenly and with no little feeling. An inspiration had come to her--a brilliant thought greater and finer far than her recent solitary imaginings under the moon.
"'Wake up'!" he exclaimed. "Whatever do you mean, Rhoda? If I'm not wide awake, who is?"
Her ideas struggled within her. She strove to say the right thing, yet almost despaired. He waited during her silence, then spoke again.
"Don't think I'm not grateful to God for such a good wife. I love her more than she knows, or ever will know. I'm even down about her sometimes, when I think she don't know. Yet what more can I do? If there's anything, 'tis your bounden duty to tell me."
He made the way clear; yet she felt a doubt that if she did speak, he might take it ill. She was frightened--an emotion so rare that she did not recognise it and feared that some physical evil must be threatening her.
"I saw Simon Snell not long since," she said. "Didn't mention it at the time, for 'twasn't interesting, except to me; but I will now. He gave me a lift on my way to Buckland and said a good few very sensible things, as his manner is. He told me of a saying he heard made by that Screech that married Dorcas. Screech was speaking of you and your wife, and he said you was like a moulting cock and hen sometimes--both down on your luck and didn't know what was the matter."
David laughed.
"So much for that then. I'll tell you how that happened. I fell in with the man--we're friends of a sort now--and chanced to talk of children. I may have just hinted I was sorry to be without 'em. But that was all. He's jealous of me as a matter of fact. He's getting on pretty well too; but he don't get on as quick as me; and he's handicapped by his mother and his children."
"He spoke of Margaret, too, however."