He had learned one sound lesson, which was the superfluousness of women in the scheme of life. From henceforward he was "shut of" them. Long ago he had denied himself women in their more casual aspect, using them entirely for practical purposes, but now he realised that women no longer had any practical purpose as far as he was concerned. The usefulness of woman was grossly overrated. It is true that she produced offspring, but he thought irritably that Providence might have found some more satisfactory way of perpetuating the human race. Everything a woman did was bound to go wrong somehow. She was nothing but a parasite and an incubus, a blood-sucking triviality, an expense and a snare. So he tore woman out of his life as he tore up the gorse on Boarzell.
"You counsel wisely, stranger," said the monk, passing round, and standing in the shadow of the tree on the left of Holgrave, whom he forced to retire and crouch like the rest.
"O, I crave your pardon, good father," returned Calverley smiling; "I mistook you for one John Ball, the son of a bondman of this barony.""Oh, here it is! what do you think of it?"Tyler, however, was more intent on unhorsing the sword-bearer, than listening to the king, for he now grasped Newton by the shoulder, and endeavoured to drag him from his horse.After the children were in bed she changed her dress, putting on the best she hada washing silk with pansies sewn over it, one of her wedding gowns. She frowned at it as she had frowned at the babies' dressesit was so old-fashioned, and worn in places. She suddenly found herself wishing that she loved Reuben so much as not to mind wearing old clothes for his sake. For the first time she could visualise such a state of affairs, for she had met the man for whom she would have worn rags. If only that man had been Reuben, her lawful husband, instead of another! "But I'll be true to him! I'll be true to him!" she murmured, and found comfort in the words till she realised that it was the first time that she had ever glimpsed the possibility of not being true.