the
orchard and maybe set out dwarfs. At first Lydia did not half listen,
knowing his purpose in distracting her. Then she began to answer. Once
she laughed when he told her the colonel, in learning to dig potatoes,
had sliced them with the hoe. Father, he told her, was what might be
called a library agriculturist. He was reading agricultural papers now.
He could answer almost any question you asked. As for bugs and their
natural antidotes, he knew them like a book. He even called himself an
agronomist. But when it came to potatoes! By and by they were talking
together and he had succeeded in giving her that homely sense of
intimacy he had been striving for. She forgot the pang that pierced her
when she saw him walking beside the woman who owned him through the
law. He was theirs, hers and her father's and Anne's, because they knew
him as he was and were desperately seeking to succour his maimed life.

But as she was going to sleep a curious question asked itself of Lydia.
Didn't she want him to go back to his wife and be happy with her, if
that could be? Lydia had no secrets from herself, no emotional veilings.
She told herself at once that she didn't want it at all. No Esther made
good as she was fair, by some apt miracle, could be trusted with the man
she had hurt. According to Lydia, Esther had not in her even the seeds
of such compassion as Jeff deserved.

XXXV

When the cold weather came and Alston Choate and Weedon Moore became
rival candidates for the mayoralty of Addington, strange things began to
happen. Choate, cursing his lot inwardly, but outwardly deferential to
his mother who had really brought it on him, began to fulfil every last
requirement of the zealous candidate. He even learned to make speeches,
not the lucid exponents of the law that belonged to his court career,
but prompt addresses, apparently unconsidered, at short notice. The one
innovation he drew the line at was the flattering recognition of men he
had never, in the beaten way of life, recognised before. He could not,
he said, kiss babies. But he would tell the town what he thought it
needed, coached, he ironically added when he spoke the expansive truth
at home, by his mother and Jeff. They were ready to bring kindling to
boil the pot, Mrs. Choate in her grand manner of beckoning the ancient
virtues back, Jeff, as Alston told, him, hammer and tongs. Jeff also
began to make speeches, because, at one juncture when Alston gave out
f