Margaret was thinner and paler and gentler than she used to be; he noted each change with secret indignation. No doubt her short cropped hair and black dress accentuated the difference, but he fancied that an ordinary acquaintance would hardly recognise her.
There had often been a touch of defiance in her manner to Mrs. Russelthorpe; she was not defiant now, but on the contrary, painfully anxious to get on with her husband's relatives.
Meg had once believed that all her troubles were her aunt's fault; but, since then, she had failed entirely on her own account—an experience which, I suppose, comes to the majority of us sooner or later, and has a wonderfully humbling effect.
George observed also that Tom Thorpe was rather fond of her. He could not have explained how he knew it, but the fact irritated him.
"I wish ye'd coax dad to come and take a bite o' some'at," Tom said presently. And she went at once, leaving Mr. Sauls racking his brains to remember some remark he had heard about the preacher's father. Was it that he was melancholy mad?
Dinner was nearly over when she came back.
"I have tried and tried," she said rather sadly; "but it is of no use yet. I think he hardly knew I was there, and I could not get him to attend to me to-day. He would do nothing but walk up and down, and quote bits out of the 'Lamentations'. It is dreadful to see him like that. I'll go and sing presently; sometimes that does it."
George looked up from his plate with the sudden dilating of his short-sighted eyes that Meg remembered of old.
"It must be very bad for Mrs. Thorpe to try and try," he remarked decidedly. "And you ought not to let her do it."
There was a moment's silence, then Tom laughed aggressively.