‘Yes.’
‘But what should I do?’
‘Be a parson’s wife.’
‘Never!’ she affirmed.
‘But how can you help it?’
‘I’ll run away rather!’ she said vehemently;
‘No, you mustn’t,’ Maumbry replied, in the tone he used when his mind was made up. ‘You’ll get accustomed to the idea, for I am constrained to carry it out, though it is against my worldly interests. I am forced on by a Hand outside me to tread in the steps of Sainway.’
‘Jack,’ she asked, with calm pallor and round eyes; ‘do you mean to say seriously that you are arranging to be a curate instead of a soldier?’
‘I might say a curate is a soldier—of the church militant; but I don’t want to offend you with doctrine. I distinctly say, yes.’
Late one evening, a little time onward, he caught her sitting by the dim firelight in her room. She did not know he had entered; and he found her weeping. ‘What are you crying about, poor dearest?’ he said.