"I hope you are going to be very good to-morrow, and give Jane away nicely. You mustn't give her a push, you must hand her over gracefully to the Doctor."
Dimbie screwed up his face.
"I don't fancy the job. I wish you could be there, Marg, to give me a wink at the right moment."
"Oh, don't!" I whispered, in a momentary fit of passionate longing. "Don't remind me that I can't be there. Dimbie, I am so disappointed that I shall not see Jane married! I do so love Jane. It is—hard to bear."
As the words were uttered I would have given a kingdom to recall them. When should I learn control? Pain flitted across my dear one's face, pity and sorrow.
"Never mind!" I cried, striving to heal the wound. "I shall see her dressed. She is going to don her wedding-gown in my room, and I am to put all the finishing touches. She will kneel in front of me, and I am to pull a lock of hair out here, pat one in there, persuade a curl to wander across her forehead, tilt her hat to a more fashionable angle, and altogether make her the most beautiful Jane in the world."
But Dimbie was not to be comforted. He has gone to the woods with black care hovering very close at hand, and every effort must I strain this evening to bring back the smile to his lips. There must be no sad faces to-morrow. Jane has had a somewhat hard and lonely life, and she must embark upon her new voyage without a shadow of unhappiness. The Doctor will be good to her, I know—gentle and chivalrous. One knows instinctively when a man will be good to the woman he has married; it is in his voice, his manner, in the very way he looks at her. What Dimbie is to me he will be to her. Why should Jane and I be of the elect among women? We deserve it no more than mother and Nanty. But they will have their compensation, I verily believe. God in His goodness will reserve for all the tired, disillusioned wives of the world a little peaceful niche where they may rest from their husbands, which is another word for labours. And the husbands! I do not think that theirs is always the blame, the fault. There must be many too who would like to find a peaceful haven where they may smoke and read, and put their feet upon the chairs, and rest from the perpetual nagging and fault-finding of their wives.
*****
Amelia is back and has roused the Help, for her voice was borne to me loudly indignant. "And there is no kettle boiling for tea!" Poor Help, or sensible Help? Did she realise that if she waited long enough Amelia would put on the kettle? There are usually plenty of Amelias to put on kettles and scold Helps and tidy up the universe. And so also are there many Helps who realise this, and therefore sit with folded hands doing nothing so long as the Amelias will permit them. I don't know to whom my sympathy goes the most, the Amelias or Helps.
Peter and mother are back too, and are removing their outdoor wraps. Peter, blowing and snorting like the alligator to which Amelia likened him, has informed me that it is a beastly cold day with an east wind, that the roads in Surrey are the worst in Europe, and that mother is the slowest woman in God's universe. Mother has tip-toed back to tell me what she thinks of Peter. That his limp was so fast and furious that you might just as well try to keep up with a fire-engine, that she has made up her mind that this will be her last walk with him (mother has been saying this for many years), and that he has forbidden her to wear her new bonnet on the morrow, as—she looks a fright in it.