"Maybe," concentrated; "but it's lucky she isn't here to make deadly sense of it." A humble-bee buzzes close to her ear, and she is roused to a sense of facts, and laughs to think how nearly they have quarrelled over a mare that was sold before she knew him.
Some evenings later she is stretched motionless in a chair; and yet she conveys an impression of restlessness,—a sensitively nervous person would feel it. She is gazing at her husband; her brows are drawn together, and make three little lines. He is reading, reading quietly, without moving his eyes quickly from side to side of the page as she does when she reads, and he pulls away at a big pipe with steady enjoyment. Her eyes turn from him to the window, and follow the course of two clouds; then they close for a few seconds, then open to watch him again. He looks up and smiles.
"Finished your book?"
There is a singular, soft monotony in his voice; the organ with which she replies is capable of more varied expression.
"Yes, it is a book makes one think. It would be a greater book if he were not an Englishman; he's afraid of shocking the big middle class. You wouldn't care about it."
"Finished your smoke?"
"No, it went out; too much fag to light up again! No," protestingly, "never you mind, old boy, why do you?"
He has drawn his long length out of his chair, and kneeling down beside her guards a lighted match from the incoming evening air. She draws in the smoke contentedly, and her eyes smile back with a general vague tenderness.
"Thank you, dear old man!"
"Going out again?" Negative head-shake.