Even from a distance the maiden’s determination and strength of mind were apparent; she approached, her face redder even than usual after the climb, encased in the braided jacket that fitted her as severely as sardines are fitted in their tin.
“I was coming to see you, Bertha,” she cried. “I heard you were back.”
“We’ve been home several days, getting to rights.”
Miss Clover shook Bertha’s hand with much vigour, and together they walked back to the house, along the avenue bordered with leafless trees.
“Now, do tell me all about your honeymoon, I’m so anxious to hear everything.”
But Bertha was not very communicative, she had an instinctive dislike to telling her private affairs, and never had any overpowering desire for sympathy.
“Oh, I don’t think there’s much to tell,” she answered, when they were in the drawing-room and she was pouring out tea for her guest. “I suppose all honeymoons are more or less alike.”
“You funny girl,” said Miss Glover. “Didn’t you enjoy it?”
“Yes,” said Bertha, with a smile that was almost ecstatic; then after a little pause: “We had a very good time—we went to all the theatres.”
Miss Glover felt that marriage had caused a difference in Bertha, and it made her nervous to realise the change. She looked uneasily at the married woman and occasionally blushed.
“And are you really happy?” she blurted out suddenly. Bertha smiled, and reddening, looked more charming than ever.
“Yes—I think I’m perfectly happy.”
“Aren’t you sure?” asked Miss Glover, who cultivated precision in every part of life and strongly disapproved of persons who did not know their own minds.
Bertha looked at her for a moment, as if considering the question.
“You know,” she answered, at last, “happiness is never quite what one expected it to be. I hardly hoped for so much; but I didn’t imagine it quite like it is.”
“Ah, well, I think it’s better not to go into these things,” replied Miss Glover, a little severely, thinking the suggestion of analysis scarcely suitable in a young married woman. “We ought to take things as they are, and be thankful.”
“Ought we?” said Bertha lightly, “I never do.... I’m never satisfied with what I have.”
They heard the opening of the front door and Bertha jumped up.
“There’s Edward! I must go and see him. You don’t mind, do you?”
She almost skipped out of the room; marriage, curiously enough, had dissipated the gravity of manner which had made people find so little girlishness about her. She seemed younger, lighter of heart.
“What a funny creature she is!” thought Miss Glover. “When she was a girl she had all the ways of a married woman, and now that she’s really married she might be a schoolgirl.”
The parson’s sister was not certain whether the irresponsibility of Bertha was fit to her responsible position, whether her unusual bursts of laughter were proper to a mystic state demanding gravity.
“I hope she’ll turn out all right,” she sighed.
But Bertha impulsively rushed to her husband and kissed him. She helped him off with his coat.
“I’m so glad to see you again,” she cried, laughing a little at her own eagerness; for it was only after luncheon that he had left her.
“Is any one here?” he asked, noticing Miss Glover’s umbrella. He returned his wife’s embrace somewhat mechanically.
“Come and see,” said Bertha, taking his arm and dragging him along. “You must be dying for tea, you poor thing.”
“Miss Glover!” he said, shaking the lady’s hand as energetically as she shook his. “How good of you to come and see us. I am glad to see you. You see we came home sooner than we expected—there’s no place like the country, is there?”
“You’re right there, Mr. Craddock; I can’t bear London.”
“Oh, you don’t know it,” said Bertha; “for you it’s Aerated Bread shops, Exeter Hall, and Church Congresses.”
“Bertha!” cried Edward, in a tone of surprise; he could not understand frivolity with Miss Glover.
That good creature was far to kind-hearted to take offence at any remark of Bertha’s, and smiled grimly: she could smile in no other way.
“Tell me what you did in London. I can’t get anything out of Bertha.”
Craddock’s mind was communicative, nothing pleased him more than to give people information, and he was always ready to share his knowledge with the world at large. He never picked up a fact without rushing to tell it to somebody else. Some persons when they know a thing immediately lose interest and it bores them to discuss it, but Craddock was not of these. Nor could repetition exhaust his eagerness to enlighten his fellows, he would tell an hundred people the news of the day and be as fresh as ever when it came to the hundred and first. Such a characteristic is undoubtedly a gift, useful in the highest degree to schoolmasters and politicians, but slightly tedious to their hearers. Craddock favoured his guest with a detailed account of all their adventures in London, the plays they had seen, the plots thereof and the actors who played them. He gave the complete list of the museums and churches and public buildings they had visited, while Bertha looked at him, smiling happily at his enthusiasm. She cared little what he spoke of, the mere sound of his voice was music in her ears, and she would have listened delightedly while he read aloud from end to end Whitaker’s Almanack: that was a thing, by the way, which he was quite capable of doing. Edward corresponded far more with Miss Glover’s conception of the newly married man than did Bertha with that of the newly married woman.
“He is a nice fellow,” she said to her brother afterwards, when they were eating their supper of cold mutton, solemnly seated at either end of a long table.
“Yes,” answered the Vicar, in his tired, patient voice, “I think he’ll turn out a good husband.”
Mr. Glover was patience itself, which a little irritated Miss Ley, who liked a man of spirit; and of that Mr. Glover had never a grain. He was resigned to everything; he was resigned to his food being badly cooked, to the perversity of human nature, to the existence of dissenters (almost), to his infinitesimal salary; he was resignation driven to death. Miss Ley said he was like those Spanish donkeys that one sees plodding along in a string, listlessly bearing over-heavy loads—patient, patient, patient. But not so patient as Mr. Glover; the donkey sometimes