Ned had flown into a passion.
"It's all the same to me, Richard, what I'm called," Mary soothed him.
"And don't you think Polly was beginning to sound RATHER childish, now
I'm nearly twenty-four?"
But: "Oh, what COULD Ned have seen in her?" she sighed to herself
dismayed. For Mrs. Ned was at least ten years older than her husband;
and whatever affection might originally have existed between them was
now a thing of the past She tyrannised mercilessly over him, nagging at
him till Ned, who was nothing if not good-natured, turned sullen and
left off tossing his child in the air.
"We must just make the best of it, Richard," said Mary. "After all,
she's really fond of the baby. And when the second comes. . . you'll
attend her yourself, won't you, dear? I think somehow her temper may
improve when that's over."
For this was another thing: Mrs. Ned had arrived there in a condition
that raised distressing doubts in Mary as to the dates of Ned's marriage
and the birth of his first child. She did not breathe them to Richard;
for it seemed to her only to make matters of this kind worse, openly to
speak of them. She devoted herself to getting the little family under a
roof of its own. Through Richard's influence Ned obtained a clerkship in
a carrying-agency, which would just keep his head above water; and she
found a tiny, three-roomed house that was near enough to let her be
daily with her sister-in-law when the latter's time came.
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