or at
lunch-time it came on to rain, and Ted would not let her get wet. He
was proud of seeing her rough it sometimes; he delighted to take her
hunting on days when no other lady was in the field, to see her face,
rosy and eager, her bright hair darkened with the wet, the raindrops
hanging on her hat. He kept her beside him, standing silent and patient
in a certain soppy, sodden spot by the river, waiting for the chance of
a wild duck flying homeward above the low-lying mists of the fens. What
did not hurt him could not harm her, in her youth and strength and
spirit, he thought.

"She has the pluck and the staying power of a man," he was proud to
tell Anstey; but was proud, too, now and again, to exercise his new
prerogative of taking care of the wife who was such a recent, dear
possession. Quite unexpectedly, he would veto some proceeding she
proposed.

"I won't have you doing it," he would say with dignity. And she was
equally proud to obey.

"Ted says I mustn't," or "Ted says I may." What, in those golden hours,
did it matter which?

She walked with him, bareheaded, through the drizzling rain to the
house where the bicycles were kept, and felt the tyres with him, and
rubbed a spot of rust off the handle bar, and walked beside him again,
he pushing the machine, down the drive to the road.

"It's a beastly day," Ted said, with an eye cocked at the low-hanging,
steel-coloured clouds. "If Bob wasn't so keen on my seeing this horse,
I'd chuck it and stay with you."

"Come home soon," she begged him; and, "You may be sure I shall come as
soon as I possibly can," he promised her.

"It wasn't Bob's dog that bothered you the other day," she told him as
he stood ready to mount, his foot on the pedal; "Bob hasn't got a
little white dog."

"It must have been that brute that ran out from Barker's under
Starlight's feet the other day, then," he called, and was off.

Nell stood by the gate and watched him till he joined his friend, and,
in spite of the faster falling rain, she watched him still. Before they
reached the bend of the road Ted turned his head; she waved a gay hand
to him, and he, hesitating for a moment, wheeled round and bicycled
back.

"Did you call me, Nell?" he said.

Of course she had not called.

"Bob knew you hadn't, but I thought I heard you call; and then you held
up your hand and beckoned me."

"Nonsense! Nothing of the sort!" she laughed. "Be off, Ted. I shall
never get you home again if y