And so they sat down to dinner. They were half through with it when Mrs. Winnie accepted a nod from John Gore and pushed back her chair, and picking up a wedding-favor from under a mug on the dresser, she went to her man and held it under his nose. Mr. Jennifer stared at the gilded sprigs and the ribbons very gravely. “I dunno as I be a widower yet,” he said, as his slow brain took in the nature of the thing, “nor be you a widow, Winnie.” “Oh, you thick-head, Chris!” Mr. Jennifer looked at her, and then, with a sudden gleam of the eyes, at John Gore and the lady. “Be that so, my dear?” “Surely,” said Mrs. Winnie, in a whisper. Then Mr. Jennifer laid a hand to his mug, rose slowly and solemnly, and stared hard at the bride and bridegroom. “Ut be a pleasure—” He paused and reconsidered the beginning. “Ut be a pleasure—” John Gore and Barbara looked up at him smilingly, and their eyes seemed to drive the whole art of oratory out of Mr. Jennifer’s head. He took refuge in his mug, brandished it toward them, and set it down empty, with emphasis. Then he looked at his wife with an affectionate grin. “I be powerful pleased, my dear. Seven years ago—” “Eight,” interposed the wife, with a shocked glance at son William. “Eight be ut, then—I dared ut like a man, and I’d dare ut again, please God.” “Lor’, Christopher!” “William, keep t’ gravy off thy breeches. Mr. Gore, sir, you’ll be for pardoning me, but t’ lady’s face be a good bargain. T’ Bible says something of vines and fig leaves and olive branches—I dunno as I quite knows what; but I wish ye all of ut, sir, you—and the lady.” So Barbara lay in her lover’s arms that night, and they heard the birds break out with their songs at dawn. XLIX The sun was up, the birds making the air quiver, the life of the world awake with the faint fragrance of a spring morning. Barbara, lying upon her lover’s arm, looked with shadowy eyes at the casement that caught the light of the glowing east. And with the first coming of consciousness she had remembered the refugee at Thorn and the part that they had set themselves to play that day. The “self” in them was to be thrust aside on that first morning of their life together.