And in presenting
these, she found out more of what people were thinking and feeling than
her husband had done in all the eight weeks of her absence.
Mahony was loath to damp her pleasure straightway; he bided his time. He
could not know that Polly also had been laying plans, and that she
watched anxiously for the right moment to unfold them.
The morning after her return, she got a lift in the baker's cart and
drove out to inspect John's children. What she saw and heard on this
visit was disquieting. The children had run wild, were grown dirty, sly,
untruthful. Especially the boy.--"A young Satan, and that's a fact,
Mrs. Mahony! What he needs is a man's hand over him, and a good hidin'
six days outer seven."
It was not alone little Johnny's misconduct, however, that made Polly
break silence. An incident occurred that touched her still more nearly.
Husband and wife sat snug and quiet as in the early days of their
marriage. Autumn had come round and a fire burnt in the stove, before
which Pompey snorted in his dreams. But, for all the cosy tranquillity,
Polly was not happy; and time and again she moistened and bit at the tip
of her thread, before pointing it through her needle. For the book open
before Richard, in which he was making notes as he read, was--the
Bible. Bending over him to drop a kiss on the top of his head, Polly had
been staggered by what she saw. Opposite the third verse of the first
chapter of Genesis: "And God said, Let there be light: and there was
light," he had written: "Three days before the sun!" Her heart seemed to
shrivel, to grow small in her breast, at the thought of her husband
being guilty of such impiety.
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