It was the sort of thing to which there was no answer; it was true, yet it was so unjust; no doubt she intended it for his soul’s health, but can anything so cruel be also sanitary? ‘Bubble-and-squeak,’ he could not fail to see, in caricature, the likeness to his ebullient enthusiasm which had so moved and uplifted the hearts of his hearers, his own also; and as he let the wound go home he felt (without counting) how many times he could have killed her! And yet, if I can see truly into Davidina’s mind, all that she meant was that Jonathan’s prayers would be made much better by his not preparing them. I am not sure that she was right; I have heard both; and I do not think that there was much to choose. Prepared and unprepared alike they always moved his audiences more than they moved me. CHAPTER SIX _A Closed Incident_ A week later he very nearly did kill her. The good which men imagine, and the diminished version of it which, when it actually takes place, has so little recognizable likeness to the thing desired, found exemplification in this event. For though Mr. Trimblerigg had often wished Davidina out of life, it was a serious shock to him when by sheer accident he one day pushed her into the water, and was forced for a considerable while to believe that she was drowned. It happened late one evening, on the edge of night, as brother and sister were returning from a shopping expedition, upon which, rather against his will, he had been forced to accompany her to help carry parcels. Taking the short way back, they came by a wood to the home fields at a point where a deep flowing stream was crossed by a narrow foot-bridge. There had been rain; the plank was slippery, the stream in flood; it was getting dark. Mr. Trimblerigg thought that he was carrying more than his share of the parcels, and the unappreciative companionship of Davidina had made him cross. Embarked upon the plank Davidina suddenly stopped to change over her parcels so as to get help of the hand-rail; and Mr. Trimblerigg coming close behind gave her an impatient nudge harder than he knew. With an exasperated scream Davidina missing the hand-rail toppled and swung sideways. With quaint heroism she threw him her parcels as she descended streamwards. Two of them Mr. Trimblerigg managed to field; the third made the lethal plunge after her, and being of lighter substance jaunted gaily along the swift current into which she had wholly disappeared.