So the newly-wedded couple walked the dozen miles, side by side when they started, the young wife plodding on behind, and being waited for at intervals when she could not keep up with the bridegroom's steady stride. Daniel was thirty-five at the time, and he had waited until after his mother's death before he made up his mind to marry. He meant to live in the old home always, married or single, and he did not believe in two mistresses under the same roof. He surprised everybody by taking to wife Barbara Sharp, aged twenty-two, and consequently thirteen years younger than himself.
A far-seeing man was Daniel, even in this matter. He had watched the girl closely, for she was in service at Grimblethorpe, before he popped the question. He knew how thrifty she was, and that, instead of wearing feathers and finery, and aping those who could afford such things, and whose position they became, she made her simple garments last twice as long as most did, and put them together with her own clever fingers. She liked saving almost as well as he did, and had a "nice bit" in the bank already.
Of course he might have married somebody higher up than a mere servant. But would one of the farmers' or tradesmens' daughters have stepped beside him in his rut? By no means. They would have wanted to drag him into a wider one, and to scatter to the winds some of the dearly-loved savings that it had been the work of three generations to bring together.
It would be different with Barbara Sharp. She would be lifted into a higher part of the road, albeit the rut might be narrow, and be mistress instead of maid, though in a much smaller dwelling than the one in which she served.
Even in the matter of age Daniel had made his calculations. "A wife should be a dozen years younger than her husband, so as to be able to nurse him when he gets a good way on in life. A woman gets looked after by other women folk; but for a man, his wife is the natural nurse." (Daniel said "natteral.") "And it is very upsetting for him to have anyone else about him in his latter days."
Self came first with Daniel, even in his way of looking right on to the very end of life.
He was dreadfully upset on his wedding-day, for just when home was reached, Barbara's face went white, and down she dropped in a dead faint on the floor of the "house," as the apartment was called which did everyday duty for sitting-room and kitchen. There was a parlour, but it was kept sacred to Sundays and state occasions.
This fainting fit filled Daniel with misgivings. Not so much on account of the hardships to which he had subjected his bride in making her walk so many miles during the heat of the day, but lest after all he had married a delicate woman, and might find her a burden instead of a helpmeet.
Such, however, was not the case. Barbara, on coming to, seemed properly ashamed of herself for having excited such a commotion; said such a thing had never happened before, and she did not think it would again. She had been mistimed, having worked early and late to do everything in the way of preparation for her marriage, instead of spending a needless shilling. On the top of all this, the walk had been too much for her—that was all, so Daniel was comforted.
Into the rut stepped Barbara, and kept therein close beside her husband. She had few relatives, and by degrees, as no visits were paid on either side, she lost sight of these. She was not an inquisitive woman, and was content to know that there was no fear of want before their eyes, and to work, that additions might be made to whatever savings already existed.