THREE:Once more her attitude towards him had changed. She no longer felt the timid passion of the first months after her marriage, but she also no longer felt that sinister dread and foreboding which had succeeded it. She looked upon him less as her husband, inspiring alternately love and terror, than as the father of her children. She saw him, so to speak, through them. She loved him because they were his as well as hers. She spoke less of "I" and "he," and more of "us," "we," and "ours.""I justabout will speak. A purty mess you've got me into. You ought to have told me before we married as he had a son out in Canada."
THREE:"He'll soon be able to do a bit of work wud us, Beatup," said Reuben apocalyptically."I'll have him on when he's ten or thereabouts, and at fifteen he'll be doing full man's work. I shouldn't wonder as how I'd never want another hand but youwe could manage the pl?ace, I reckon, till the lad's old enough, and then there'll be others...."
THREE:"And I ask wot d'you mean by 'worth while'?"
THREE:"Good night," replied Holgrave, though without moving his eyes from the now darkly-smoking ruin; and there he stood with unchanging gaze till the sky had entirely lost its ruddy hue, and the smouldering embers of the cottage could no longer be distinguished; and then he entered his dwelling, and, closing the door, threw himself upon his bedbut not to sleep.Towards the end of June the sessions commenced at Gloucester, and Holgrave once more stood in the hall of justicenot as a looker on, but as an actor. Although, at the present period, the charge would have assumed a truly formidable shape, yet the deed was not then accounted even as maihemfor the simple reason, that the loss of an ear did not prevent a man from performing military duties.
THREE:The weeks wore on and it dawned on him that he must pull himself together for a fresh campaign. He must have more warriorshe could not fight Boarzell with only traitors and hirelings. He must marry again.Reuben's lip curled. He could not help despising his father for this ambitionless content.