“You see, my life is a healthy one, I ride miles a day all over the farms, there isn’t a fact concerning manure I couldn’t tell you; as to drainage, I feel like turning into a pipe myself; I have even a medicine chest, and doctor the babies, Heaven help them! If I could only follow him as he would me, it would be less awful, but you see, there’s baby, my place is here, and I must just stand and wait like those wretched creatures in the hymn. As for those relief expeditions, though I send cheques, I look upon them as a farce, as if he wanted to be caught and brought home like a missionary!”
“It seems to me you are on the go from morning to night, what time do you leave yourself for sleeping?”
“Oh, any amount, more than I want.”
“How long did you sleep last night?”
“Oh, I forget. Are you too tired to drive to a farm about a mile away?”
“Tired! No, dear,” stooping down and kissing her, “but must you go? Lie down, and let me read to you.”
Anything in the shape of tenderness was just the one stroke too much for Gwen, she gave a quick dry sob and moved away.
“I can’t stand that sort of thing,” she said, “I told you I had got maudlin. Treat me as you would a nice orthodox Christian widow, who wears crêpe and caps and gets just to the proper state of thinness, pulling herself up, however, just short of scragginess like a self-respecting creature. And now we must hurry, for I hear the carriage.”
She turned round as she was leaving the room, and laughed.
“I am altogether losing tone. Do you know that young Will Dyer—Sir William’s black sheep, whom I have been occupying my spare moments in being a mother to, and in trying to detach from the devil—began yesterday to make violent love to me?”