“Why, then, are we sent here and the others are let alone? I suppose the Major is not here?”
“I cannot say.”
“To think I should ever come to this! I haven’t got a rag with me beyond what I have on. I haven’t got any clean things; a nice sort of creature I am to go out of doors. And it all had nothing to do with us.”
“Nothing to do with us! My dear Jane, do you mean that we are not to help other people, but sit at home and enjoy ourselves? Besides, if you thought it wrong, why did you not say so before?”
“How was I to know what you were doing? You never told me anything; you never do. One thing I do know is that we shall starve and I suppose I shall have to go about and beg. I haven’t even another pair of shoes or stockings to my feet.”
Zachariah pondered for a moment. His first impulse was something very different; but at last he rose, went up to his wife, kissed her softly on the forehead, and said:
“Never mind, my dear; courage, you will have your clothes next week. Come with me and look out for a lodging.”
Mrs. Zachariah, however, shook herself free—not violently, but still decidedly—from his caresses.
“Most likely seized by the Government. Look for a lodging! That’s just like you! How can I go out in this pouring rain?”
Zachariah lately, at any rate, had ceased to expect much affection in his wife for him; but he thought she was sensible, and equal to any complexity of circumstances, or even to disaster. He thought this, not on any positive evidence; but he concluded, somewhat absurdly, that her coldness meant common sense and capacity for facing trouble courageously and with deliberation. He had now to find out his mistake, and to learn that the absence of emotion neither proves, nor is even a ground for suspecting, any good whatever of a person; that, on the contrary, it is a ground for suspecting weakness, and possibly imbecility.