Grizel’s hazel eyes widened with a look of fear.
“Does one inevitably change so much?”
“One grows!” Mrs Evans said. “How could it be otherwise? Marriage for a girl means a shouldering of responsibility for the first time in her life, facing a money strain, a health strain, a curtailment of liberty. There is more joy one hopes, but there is certainly more discipline. Troubles must come—”
Grizel threw out a protesting hand. Her thoughts had slipped instinctively from the newly engaged couple, to the more enthralling subject of Martin and herself, and the prophecy hurt.
“Why must they, if they aren’t needed? Suppose people can be disciplined by happiness, why need they have the trials? I am disciplined by happiness. It suits me; it makes me good. It does not make me selfish and unkind. And I am grateful. I go about that little house, and there’s something inside me singing ‘Thank you!’ ‘Thank you!’ all day long. I’m so brimming over with love and charity that it’s all I can do not to kiss the cook on her cross old face, and press a diamond brooch into her hand. Anything to make her cheerful! It hurts to see anyone less happy than myself. Don’t, please, say I must have trouble, Mrs Evans. Let me stay in the sun!”
“Dear child!” said the Vicar’s wife, and once again she felt the unwonted pricking sensation at the back of her eyes. She was used to sorrow, skilled in offering consolation and advice, but it was all too rare an experience to meet with joy. In the depths of her kind old heart she wondered if indeed Grizel were not right, but not for the world would she have allowed herself to express so unorthodox a feeling. She walked in silence for some yards, and then, with a sudden change of subject, asked shortly, “How’s Katrine?”
“Talking of love in the sunshine? Oh, Katrine’s well! She’s just returned from her honeymoon, and Captain Blair has had his old bungalow enlarged. They had a glorious time. She was married from her friend’s house, and rode off to camp in the wilds. She shed her skirt as soon as she arrived at the camp, and never saw it again till her return. A honeymoon in leggings! What would Chumley say to that?”
“It sounds exceedingly—er—unlike Katrine!”
“Yes, doesn’t it? Isn’t it splendid? And she loved it. Her only worry was that bits of her looked so nice, that she was longing all the time to see herself full length.—However, ‘Jim’ has taken her photograph!”
“I hope he will make her happy. Katrine has a difficult nature, and it was such a very short acquaintance.”