Heavens, how they kept it up! All through the winter evenings, when they were not going to lectures, they were reading Browning aloud to each other. For pure love of it, for its own sake, they said. But did Aggie tire on that high way, she kept it up for Arthur’s sake; did Arthur flag, he kept it up for hers.
Then, in the spring, there came a time when Aggie couldn’t go to lectures any more. Arthur went, and brought her back the gist of them, lest she should feel herself utterly cut off. The intellectual life had, even for him, become something of a struggle. But, tired as he sometimes was, she made him go, sending, as it were, her knight into the battle.
“Because now,” she said, “we shall have to keep it up more than ever. For them, you know.”
V
“‘I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea,
And it was full of pretty things for Baby and for me.’”
Aggie always sang that song the same way. When she sang “for Baby” she gave the baby a little squeeze that made him laugh; when she sang “for me” she gave Arthur a little look that made him smile.
“‘There were raisins in the cabin, sugared kisses in the hold.’”
Here the baby was kissed crescendo, prestissimo, till he laughed more than ever.
“‘The sails were made of silver and the masts were made of gold.