but that he could go there at any time. He was establishing
himself in the place, and must strike root on all sides.

This was a disappointment to Mrs. Verstage. Reluctantly she admitted
that her health was breaking down, and that, moreover, whilst Simon
remained tough and unshaken. The long-expected and hoped for time
when Iver should become a permanent inmate of the house, and she
would spend her declining years in love and admiration, had vanished
to the region of hopes impossible of fulfilment.

Simon Verstage took the decline of his wife's powers very
philosophically. He had been so accustomed to her prognostications
of evil, and harangues on her difficulties, that he was case-hardened,
and did not realize that there was actual imminence of a separation
by death.

"It's all her talk," he would say to a confidential friend; "she's
eighteen years younger nor me, and so has eighteen to live after
I'm gone. There ain't been much took out of her: she's not one as
has had a large family. There was Iver, no more; and women are
longer-lived than men. She talks, but it's all along of Polly that
worrits her. Let Polly alone and she'll get into the ways of the
house in time; but Sanna be always at her about this and about that,
and it kinder bewilders the wench, and she don't know whether to
think wi' her toes, and walk wi' her head."

In the Punch-Bowl the relations that subsisted between the
Broom-Squire and his wife were not more cordial than before. They
lived in separate worlds. He was greatly occupied with his solicitor
in Godalming, to whom he was constantly driving over. He saw little
of Mehetabel, save at his meals, and then conversation was limited
on his part to recrimination and sarcastic remarks that cut as a
razor. She made no reply, and spoke only of matters necessary. To
his abusive remarks she had no answer, a deepening color, a
clouding eye showed that she felt what he said. And it irritated
the man that she bore his insolence meekly. He would have preferred
that she should have retorted. As it was, so quiet was the house
that Sally Rocliffe sneered at her brother for living in it with
Mehetabel, "just like two turtle doves,--never heard in the
Punch-Bowl of such a tender couple. Since that little visit to
the Moor you've been doin' nothin' but billin and cooin'." Then
she burst into a verse of an old folks song, singing in harsh
tones--

"A woman that hath a bad husband, I find
By scolding won'