ONE:Sometimes there would be males too, and Reuben[Pg 279] found that he could be jealous on occasion. It annoyed him to see a young counter-jumper from Rye sitting in the parlour with an unmanly tea-cup, and he would glare on such aristocracy as a bank-clerk or embryo civil servant, whose visits Rose considered lent a glamour to Odiam. Like a wise woman she used her husband's jealousy to her own advantage. She soon grew extremely skilful in manipulating it, and by its means wrung a good deal out of him which would not otherwise have been hers.
TWO:"And pay eight shillings a month when he wants the money so badly! No, if a woman can't work fur her son, I d?an't see much good in her. Some women"rather venomously"even work fur their husbands.""Yes, by the green wax! it was. If I had only been wise enough to have kept the bag myself, poor Harvey might have been alive, and I should not have done what I am going to do this night. No;I should only have cursed the smith and forsworn the Commons, and made the best of my way to where I could have turned the gold and the gems into hard coin. Is my lord De Boteler here?"
THREE:"Send forth the hue and cry," said De Boteler. "Scour the country till the knave be found, and promise a noble to him who discovers the runaway."
TWO:"Margaret!" replied Edith, "I stir not hence. The guilty may take refuge from the anger of the laws; but it is not for the innocent to fear and fly like the felon!"Rose shuddered. "I'm not coming."
So gradually the difficult future was being settled. When they came to Rye Robert left Peter to unpack the cart and went to pay the harness bill at the saddler's. Reuben had given him five pounds, but he handed over the terrible bank-note, which was accepted without comment."You mean that if we let you adopt Sidney, you'll m?ake Odiam his when you're gone?"Bessie was now thirty, and looked older, for she had lost a front tooth and her pretty hair had faded: but she was as confident of Robert's love as ever. He had[Pg 334] written to her by every mail, she told Caro, and they had both saved and scraped and waited and counted the days till they could consummate the love born in those fields eternally fixed in twilight by their memory. There had been no intercourse between Odiam and Eggs Hole, so, as Robert had never written to his family, Caro heard for the first time of the sheep-farm in Queensland and its success. He had done badly at first, Bessie said, what with the drought and many other things against him, but now he was well established, and she would be far better off and more comfortable as the felon's wife than she had ever been as the daughter of honest parents.
荣誉榜
THREE:She was afraid of Reuben, she fled before him like a poor little lamb, trembling and bleatingand yet she would sometimes long for the inevitable day when he would grasp her and fling her across his shoulders.
THREE:Considering how much she had already given him, it was perhaps strange that she shuddered a little at this open venture.The next moment there was a bang, and Ditch's gun scattered duck-shot into the crowd. Men yelled, fought, struggled, stumbled about with their arms over their faces. For a moment nothing but panic moved them, but the next rage took its place. A volley of stones answered the gun, which being an old one and requiring careful loading, could not be brought into action again for some minutes.
