“I am not talking about that.”
“If I go to a town, I must go to the poor,” said Francis, his old ideals stirring in him.
“But think of the girls.”
“I am thinking of the girls. I shall make them work among the poor. It will do them good. It will keep their minds healthy and clear of amorous thoughts.”
“How can you be so coarse?”
This came with almost a scream, and Francis smothered what he was going to add and turned over and pretended to be asleep. His wife went on talking indignantly to herself. About five o’clock she woke him up and told him that she had been dreaming of water, which she thought meant riches, and also in her dream she had seen her son Leedham crossing the sea, and Mary had made a great match of it with a tall man who looked like a lord, but Minna had appeared very unhappy.
“I do believe,” Martha went on, “that in her heart of hearts Minna really loves Willie Folyat.”
“Nonsense,” replied Francis, “she is much too young to love anything but herself.”
Martha was enraged at this, and harped on the string of her husband’s crazy notion of living among the poor. On that point he was immovable, and Martha’s light skirmishing was fruitless. Francis turned and looked at her, told her that she wanted a clean night-cap, and went off to sleep.
They had many unhappy days, and it was some weeks before they found an incumbent willing to exchange his living for the two in distant Cornwall. This was the rector of St. Paul’s Church, Bide Street, in the darker half of our town on the north bank of the poisoned river, about which we have no pride at all.