As they were both simple souls, their love only made the words more real. Sometimes it seemed almost as if they could see up in the white glistering field behind the barn, the manger with the baby in it, the mother watching near, and the ox and the ass standing meekly beside them in the straw. Bessie said she felt sure that the shepherds watched their flocks by night in the little old meadow at the corner of Totease ... she once thought she had heard them singing. But she would not go and look.
"Your f?ather must be in lamentable heart about all this, surelye."However, though he had never deceived himself that Rose's sympathetic tendernesses meant any real sharing of his ambition, he was soon convinced that to marry her[Pg 253] would be materially to help himself in the battle which was now dragging a little on his side. He wanted ready moneyher settlements would provide that; and her heirship of Lardner held out dazzling hopes for the future. He wanted childrenwhere could he find a healthier mother? He wanted to raise the dignity of Odiam, and could hardly have thought of a better means than marriage with the niece of one of the wealthiest and most important farmers in the parish. To crown all, he gave himself an adorable woman, young, lovely, tender, and gay. This consideration could not have dragged him contrary to his ambition, but combined with it, it could give to an otherwise very practical and material plan all the heats of passion and the glories of romance."And pay eight shillings a month when he wants the money so badly! No, if a woman can't work fur her son, I d?an't see much good in her. Some women"rather venomously"even work fur their husbands."
ONE:"Well, I must be going. It's done me good, our talk. Not that you've said anything particular comforting, but then you never did. It's good anyway to sit wud a woman wot's not lik a fat stroked catnot a thin kicked one, nuther," he added viciously, remembering Caro. "You're lik a liddle tit-bird, Alice. I love you. But I'm not sorry I didn't marry you, for you'd have busted me same as Rose, only in a different way."
"Ought to! Listen to that, mother. Dud you ever hear the like? And if I cared, my lad, where wud you all be? Where wud be that plate o' sossiges you're eating? It's just because I ?un't a land-grabber lik so many I cud n?um that you and Harry sit scrunching here instead of working the flesh off your b?ans, that your mother wears a muslin apron 'stead of a sacking one, that you have good food to eat, and white bread, 'stead of oaten. Wot's the use of hundreds of acres if you ?un't comfortable at h?ame? I've no ambitions, so I'm a happy man. I d?an't want nothing I haven't got, and so I haven't got nothing I d?an't want. Surelye!"They had piled the faggots against the door of the barn. The workmen inside were tumbling about in the dark, half ignorant of what was going on.