"Yes--for reasons I can’t fathom. Either that, or she’ve got some deep matter on her mind that keeps her more than common silent. With David away the nights be cruel. Sometimes ’tis all I can do to help crying out and begging her, for pity, to open her mouth. I get off to bed so soon as I can; and so like as not, when I’m gone up, she’ll go abroad again and keep out, Lord knows where, till long after midnight." "I don’t call it respectable," said Bartley, shaking his head with pretence of disapproval. "I really don’t, Madge. I wish I could meet her on one of these moony walks. Perhaps she’d listen to reason then--if she didn’t set her pack of dogs on me!" "’Tis hard to live so close to a fellow-creature and understand her so little." "I understand her well enough--if she’d only believe it," he said. For a moment they lapsed into silence. Then he plucked a long grass-blade and began to tickle her ear. She shook her head and laughed. A bright thought came to her mind. "I heard by letter from David this morning. The matter’s settled. He’ll be bailiff of the great breeding farm--everything under him--the actual head man under the master. I feel very proud about it, for it shows how high the people rate him." "And well they may. You could trust him with the Bank of England. Never was such a dead straight, lofty-minded man in the world before." "I like you to praise him. He thinks such a lot of you. He’s even been at Rhoda about you too." "What will she do if you go to Tavistock? I reckon ’tis the thought of that more than me, or anything else, is making her down on her luck." "I was hopeful ’twould perhaps turn her more to you. She could never live in Tavistock." "No," he said, "that’s a certainty. She wants more room than a town can give her. You’re right, Madge: this must make her think a bit more of me. Canada, or here, or the North Pole--’tis all one to me if she’ll come. And if she says ’no’ again, then I’m off alone--to the Dominion. Why I’m drawn that way I hardly know. But I am." "Third time’s lucky. How I hope it will be!" "If she cared for me, even half as much as you do, I’d win her." "If she knew what a rare good chap you are, you’d win her, or any woman." "You’re always too easy with me," he said. "Lucky you didn’t marry me: you would have spoilt me utterly--not that there was much to spoil. Yet I daresay we should have jogged along very comfortable." "Who knows? Perhaps none too well, Bartley." "Perhaps not. We’re too much alike," he declared. "In many things we are." "But the weak help the weak. You’ll see a pair of bryony stems twirl round each other, and so do far better and go farther than ever they could single-handed." "’Twould be the blind leading the blind--you and me together. The oak’s more good to the ivy than anything soft like itself." "Pity I haven’t a bit of David’s iron in me," he confessed. "It is," she admitted. "A pity I haven’t too."