“She's had her way, poor girl,—yes. But I don't know as it satisfies people to have their way, always.”
Doubtless Mrs. Gaylord saw that her husband wished to talk about Marcia, and must be helped to do so by a little perverseness. “I don't know but what most of folks would say 't she'd made out pretty well. I guess she's got a good provider.”
“She didn't need any provider,” said the Squire haughtily.
“No; but so long as she would have something, it's well enough that she should have a provider.” Mrs. Gaylord felt that this was reasoning, and she smoothed out so much of the bib as she had crocheted across her knees with an air of self-content. “You can't have everything in a husband,” she added, “and Marcia ought to know that, by this time.”
“I've no doubt she knows it,” said the Squire.
“Why, what makes you think she's disappointed any?” Mrs. Gaylord came plump to the question at last.
“Nothing she ever said,” returned her husband promptly. “She'd die, first. When I was up there I thought she talked about him too much to be feeling just right about him. It was Bartley this and Bartley that, the whole while. She was always wanting me to say that I thought she had done right to marry him. I did sort of say it, at last,—to please her. But I kept thinking that, if she felt sure of it, she wouldn't want to talk it into me so. Now, she never mentions him at all, if she can help it. She writes to him every day, and she hears from him often enough,—postals, mostly; but she don't talk about Bartley, Bartley!” The Squire stretched his lips back from his teeth, and inhaled a long breath, as he rubbed his chin.
“You don't suppose anything's happened since you was up there,” said Mrs. Gaylord.
“Nothing but what's happened from the start. He's happened. He keeps happening right along, I guess.”
Mrs. Gaylord found herself upon the point of experiencing a painful emotion of sympathy, but she saved herself by saying: “Well, Mr. Gaylord, I don't know as you've got anybody but yourself to thank for it all. You got him here, in the first place.” She took one of the kerosene lamps from the table, and went upstairs, leaving him to follow at his will.