He pulled at his beer gloomily.
"You oughtn't to speak so," answered the miller, Jacob Taverner. "You'd be sorry presently if the Lord took them. Then you'd look back at such bitter words in a very different spirit."
"That I certainly should not. The Lord's welcome to 'em, I assure you. Time was when I wouldn't have minded; but now I do. Everybody knows the sort of luck I've had of late."
"This may be good luck in disguise," returned Taverner.
"Who knows but what these infants be born to set you on your legs again? They may have the very cleverness of their grandfather Churchward or their grandmother Weekes."
In a corner Mr. Huggins and Philip Weekes sat together. They were not discussing the twins; but it happened that one of the huckster's fits of depression was upon him, and he hinted at a few personal sorrows to the aged man. Valentine's mind moved slowly, and demanded great length of time to grasp any change. Many months had passed since his friend's illness, yet Mr. Huggins only now began to appreciate the fact that he was restored to health. He continued to inquire as to Philip's condition.
"'Tis a great blessing to know that you'm fully returned to the use of all your parts, I'm sure. It encourages us old chaps to hear of such recoveries. Do you call yourself perfectly well again yet?"
"Well as ever I was. 'Twasn't doctor, but the missis told me when I'd recovered. One day, without any warning, as I comed in from the fowls for my drop of beef tea, which I'd got rather to rely upon, she said there wasn't none, and she went on to add that I was 'a dare-devil old Gubbins, and would eat us all out of hearth and home, if she'd let me.' So then I knowed I was cured."
"A great female, Phil."
"She is; yet here and there, to say it without any bad meaning, I often wish she wanted more sleep. I'm a hog for sleep—'tis my nature to be so. I like ten hours when I can get it; but she—she don't cry out for more sleep than a bird takes in summer. I've knowed her talk till light scores an' scores of times. And she stops gradual, not sudden. She'll drop remarks, on and on and on—like a bell tolling for death, or a cock crowing. She don't snore, thank God—which shows how one evil be balanced against another, come to think of it."