She herself had no wish for motherhood, and expressed this so openly that in time Reuben began to entertain dark doubts of her, and to feel that she would avoid it if she could. Yet she in herself was so utterly sweet that he could not find it in his heart to be angry, or use anything but tender remonstrance when she vexed him with her attitude towards life in general and marriage in particular. She gulped at pleasure, and she gave him so much that he could not deny her what she craved for, though the mere decorativeness of her tastes amazed and sometimes appalled him. She coaxed him to buy her new curtains and chair-covers for the parlour, and to turn it into a room which could be used, where she could lounge in her pretty frocks, and entertain her women-friends--of whom she had a startling number--to afternoon tea, with cream, and little cakes that cost an amount of money altogether disproportionate to the space that they filled in one's inside. She demanded other entertainments too--visits to Rye, and even to Hastings, and jaunts to fairs other than the sanctioned one on Boarzell. Reuben was delighted with her fashionable clothes, the dainty things with which she managed to surround herself, her fastidious care for her person, her pomadings, her soapings, her scentings--but he sometimes had vague doubts of this beautiful, extravagant, irresponsible creature. He was like a man stirring in a happy dream, realising in the midst of it that he dreams, and must some day awake. § 7. The year '71 was on the whole a bad one. The summer was parched, the autumn sodden, and the winter frozen. Reuben's oats after some excellent promises failed him abruptly, as was the way with crops on Boarzell. His wheat was better in quality but poor in quantity, his mangolds had the rot, and his hops, except for the old field by the lane, were brown and ragged with blight. This would have been bad enough in any year, but in times when he bore the burden of his yet profitless milk-round it was only a little short of catastrophe. Making every allowance for a first year, that milk-round had disappointed him. He found private custom hard to win, and even the ceasing of French dairy supplies, owing to the Franco-Prussian war, did not bring him the relief he had hoped. One or two small farms on the borders of Rye catered in dairy stuff for its inhabitants, and he found them hard to outbid or outwit. Also, owing to the scarcity of grass feed, it was a bad milk year, and poor supplies were put down by consumers to the new milkman, and in more than one case custom was withdrawn.