“Reckon I would.”
“Thank God you haven’t got to choose.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t got to choose, for I’d like to show you.” “Well, I’m glad, for whichever way you chose it ud be hard for you.”
“No—not hard.”
“You don’t know, because you’re safe; you haven’t even got to think of it. But I’m sorry for some of our men—yes, for Jim Parish, and even for Peter. You see, it’s not merely choosing for themselves. They have their families to consider. You can’t dish all your relations just because you want to get married.”
Love was making her soft in judgment.
“No relation that had any heart would stand in the way of a young chap’s marrying a good girl. My mother ud sooner turn out and live in a cottage than see me go without a wife.”
“But would you turn your mother out, Ben?”
“We’d all go out together—for my wife.”
His love-making was a delightful blend of diffidence and ardour. At first it had been difficult to show him that she was touchable, approachable to caresses. Yet once she had shown him the way, he had required no more leading. He had a warm, gentle nature, expressing itself naturally in fondness. His love for her seemed to consist in equal parts of passion and affection. It lacked the self-regarding element to which she was accustomed, and though it held all the eager qualities of fire, there was about it a simplicity and a shyness which were new to her. After a time she discovered that he had a mind like a young girl’s, and an experience very nearly as white. He had spent his life in the society of animals and good women, and the animals had taught him to regard them not as symbols of license but as symbols of order, and the women had taught him that they were something more than animals. He had the fundamental cleanness of a man who takes nature naturally.