Mrs. Livesey was herself not a little moved. She and Adam had never been parted since their wedding day, and now the railway was going to put a full hundred miles between them. She felt all the solemnity of the occasion, and in her very heart wished Adam were going too.
Many a tender thought crossed the minds of both, that neither tongue expressed, though the man said with an effort, "I'll take care of this money, and keep it whole, if I can, till you come back."
"As if you need tell me that. Why, there never was such a one as you for not spending on yourself. I shall tell them all that if Ann and the others have had more money, they have not had steadier, harder-working husbands. You've never given me an ill word, Adam."
"Why should I, Maggie, lass? If I've worked out o' th' house, you've worked in it. I've often been sorry for you. You were a bright, pretty lass when you married me."
"And I'm not a bright pretty lass now. I look too old for four-and-thirty. They'll hardly know me."
Adam sighed. This remark touched a sensitive chord in his breast.
"But," continued Maggie, "you're just as fond of me yet, aren't you?"
"Fond of thee, my girl! Why, my one trouble has been, not that I got thee, but that thee didn't get a man that could give thee more and better things than I could. You took me, a poor labouring man, of no account, and naught to look at, and you've made every shilling I've earned go as far as most folk's eighteen pence. And you've grown old before your time—all through marrying me, Maggie."
The two were sitting in the railway carriage with the sleeping child in the mother's arms. They were a quarter of an hour too soon, and one of the porters, whom Adam knew, had put them into it, that they might be quiet until train time. They would be all right, he told them, and when this carriage was brought from the siding and attached to the train, Adam could get out.
Mrs. Livesey's face never before had on it such an expression as it wore at that moment. Never in her courting days had she felt so deep an affection for her homely, rugged-looking partner, as she did now that they were about to part for the first time. He had bent his head to kiss the sleeping child that lay on her lap, and as he raised it, Maggie threw her arm round his and drew his rough face to hers.