ain, said:

"I have thought."

"And--?"

"There is only one thing I am sorry for--that you are nothing worse
than a grocer. A grocer's is such a clean, dainty, aromatic trade. Now
if you kept an oil shop--there would be some credit in overlooking it.
And you are so little even of a grocer, that I should constantly forget
it. I should think of you simply as a very honest man--the most honest
man I ever knew."

Warburton's face glowed.

"Should--should?" he murmured. "Can't it be _shall_?"

And Bertha, smiling now without a touch of roguishness, smiling in the
mere joy of her heart, laid a hand in his.

CHAPTER 47

When Mrs. Cross came home she brought with her a changed countenance.
The lines graven by habitual fretfulness and sourness of temper, by
long-indulged vices of the feminine will, could not of course be
obliterated, but her complexion had a healthier tone, her eyes were
brighter, and the smile with which she answered Bertha's welcome
expressed a more spontaneous kindliness than had appeared on her face
for many a year. She had recovered, indeed, during her visit to the
home of her childhood, something of the grace and virtue in which she
was not lacking before her marriage to a man who spoilt her by excess
of good nature. Subject to a husband firm of will and occasionally
rough of tongue, she might have led a fairly happy and useful life. It
was the perception of this truth which had strengthened Bertha in her
ultimate revolt. Perhaps, too, it had not been without influence on her
own feeling and behaviour during the past week.

Mrs. Cross had much to relate. At the tea-table she told all about her
brother's household, described the children, lauded the cook and
housemaid--"Ah, Bertha, if one could get such servants here! But London
ruins them."

James Rawlings was well-to-do; he lived in a nice, comfortable way, in
a pretty house just outside the town. "Oh, and the air, Bertha. I
hadn't been there a day before I felt a different creature." James had
been kindness itself. Not a word about old differences. He regretted
that his niece had not come, but she must come very soon. And the
children--Alice, Tom, and little Hilda, so well-behaved, so
intelligent. She had brought photographs of them all. She had brought
presents--all sorts of things.

After tea, gossip continued. Speaking of the ages of the children, the
eldest eight, the youngest four, Mrs. Cross regretted their motherless
state.