CHAPTER XXVIII
CLIVE'S enforced idleness had secretly humiliated him and made him restless. Athalie in her tender wisdom understood how it was with him before he did himself, and she was already deftly guiding his balked energy into a brand new channel, the same being a bucolic one.
At first he had demurred, alleging total ignorance of husbandry; and, seated on the sill of an open window and looking down at him in the garden, she tormented him to her heart's content:
"Ignorant of husbandry!" she mimicked,—"when any husband I ever heard of could go to school to you and learn what a real husband ought to be! Why will you pretend to be so painfully modest, Clive, when you are really secretly pleased with yourself and entirely convinced that, in you, the world might discover a living pattern of model domesticity!"
"I'm glad you think so—"
"Think! If I were only as certain of anything else! Never had I dreamed that any man could become so cowed, so spiritless, so perfectly house and yard broken—"
"If I come upstairs," he said, "I'll settle you!"
Leaning from the window overlooking the garden she
lazily defied him; turned up her dainty nose at him; mocked at him until he flung aside the morning paper and rose, bent on her punishment.
"Oh, Clive, don't!" she pleaded, leaning low from the sill. "I won't tease you any more,—and this gown is fresh—"