CHAPTER XIII.
HOME.
Bideabout was driving his wife home.
Home! There is no word sweeter to him who has created that reality to which the name belongs; but there is no word more full of vague fears to one who has it to create.
Home to Bideabout was a rattle-trap farmhouse built partly of brick, mainly of timber, thatched with heather, at the bottom of the Punch-Bowl.
It was a dwelling that served to cover his head, but was without pleasant or painful associations—a place in which rats raced and mice squeaked; a place in which money might be made and hoarded, but on which little had been spent. It was a place he had known from childhood as the habitation of his parents, and which now was his own. His childhood had been one of drudgery without cheerfulness, and was not looked back on with regret. Home was not likely to be much more to him in the future than it was in the present. More comfortable perhaps, certainly more costly. But it was other with Mehetabel.
She was going to the unknown.
As we shudder at the prospect of passing out of this world into that beyond the veil, so does many a girl shrink at the prospect of the beyond seen through the wedding ring.
She had loved the home at the Ship. Would she learn to love the home in the Punch-Bowl?
She had understood and made allowance for the humors of the landlord and landlady of the tavern; did she know those of her future associate in the farm? To many a maid, the great love that swells her heart and dazzles her brain carries her into the new condition on the wings of hope.