“She is not like other girls. Did you not take notice? She was cold and regardless when you arrived, as if you were a stranger--never even put aside her knitting, never gave you a word.”
Zerah was perhaps glad of an excuse for not continuing an angry discussion with her husband before her brother. She was hot; she could now give forth her heat upon the head of the girl.
“I don’t think I gave her much chance,” said Jason; “you see, I was talking to Pasco about the oaks.”
“Give her the chance?” retorted Zerah. “As if my Wilmot would have waited till her father gave her the chance. It is not for the father to dance after his child, but the child should run to its father. I’ll tell you what I believe, Jason, and nothing will get me out of the belief. You know how Jane Simmons’ boy was born without eyelashes; and how last spring we had a lamb without any tail; and that Bessie Penny hasn’t got any lobe of ear at all, only a hole in the side of her head; and Ephraim Tooker has no toe-nails.”
“I know all that.”
“Very well. I believe--and you’ll never shake it out of me--that child of yours was born without a heart.”
CHAPTER III
ALL INTO GOLD
Pasco Pepperill was a man slow, heavy, and apparently phlegmatic, and he was married to a woman full of energy, and excitable.
Pasco had inherited Coombe Cellars from his father; he had been looked upon as the greatest catch among the young men of the neighbourhood. It was expected that he would marry well. He had married well, but not exactly in the manner anticipated. Coombe Cellars was a centre of many activities; it was a sort of inn--at all events a place to which water parties came to picnic; it was a farm and a place of merchandise. Pasco had chosen as his wife Zerah Quarm, a publican’s daughter, with, indeed, a small sum of money of her own, but with what was to him of far more advantage, a clear, organising head. She was a scrupulously tidy woman, a woman who did everything by system, who had her own interest or that of the house ever in view, and would never waste a farthing.
Had the threads of the business been placed in Zerah’s hands, she would have managed all, made money in every department, and kept the affairs of each to itself in her own orderly brain.