Prior went through a quick mental sum.
‘Yes, that will do,’ he said, when it had been added up. ‘I have played many a part, and have no doubt I could acquit myself with credit in this. I’ll go to church and hear the parson’s drawl (I’ve not heard it this many a year), and I’ll reproduce it for you whenever you please with becoming gravity.’
‘Thanks! I’ve no manner of doubt you will. Then you will tell me what I owe you? And, by the way, this matter must never cross your lips, Prior; I may trust you for that?’
‘You may.’
‘Then on Saturday of next week, all being well?’
‘On Saturday of next week, all being well,’ repeated Prior, in such a startling reproduction of Meadowes’ voice that both men laughed aloud.
But laughter was not in Meadowes’ heart though it was on his lips. He rose to say good-night soon after, and Simon Prior lay back in his arm-chair and smiled.
CHAPTER V
Perhaps it was because he felt the knot so obligingly tied by Simon Prior not quite impossible to untie, that Richard Meadowes took his marital obligations very lightly. He was well pleased with his new acquisition, and used to ride out from town constantly to see Anne. They would walk out together in the long spring twilights, and gradually Anne began to lose her dread of such a fine lover and spoke to him freely and naturally.
Anne could be a very amusing companion; for she had quick wits; and that for companionship is far better than being well educated. She would tell Meadowes all about her life; excepting one episode only, no mention of which ever crossed her lips—of the men who had courted her, and the women who had hated her, of the straits of poverty, and all she had seen and suffered and enjoyed in her five-and-twenty years’ pilgrimage. In return, she would ask Meadowes about the unknown world to which he belonged. Had they always enough to eat without thinking about it or working for it? (‘Lord sakes, how grand!’) Had they never to walk when they were weary, or toil when they were faint? Was it possible he had never known what it was to be cold for want of clothing, or run out of fuel in the winter? (‘You scarce know you’re alive!’) Or, sorest strait of all, was it possible he had never known sickness and want together? (‘You’ve not felt the Lord’s hand on you yet then, Dick.’) And she would listen with delight to Meadowes’ tales of his world. Outwardly, indeed, Anne was cheerful enough now; Meadowes began to think she was forgetting the past. Only her entire silence about Sebastian Shepley seemed to mark any feeling on the subject. Yet every now and then he fancied she was thinking of her former lover. Once as they walked together down the lane on a lovely summer night—the birds were singing as if their little throats would burst, the year’s jubilee was at its height—Meadowes turned to her in his sudden, impulsive way.