.

The days that followed brought Rachel no cheer of life. She had
thought that her husband would take her away to his home under
Snaefell, and so remove her from the scene of her humiliation. He
excused himself, saying that Stappen was but a poor place, where the
great ships never put in to trade, and that there was more chance of
livelihood at Reykjavik. Rachel crushed down her shame, and they took
a mean little house in the fishing quarter. But Stephen did no work.
Once he went out four days with a company of Englishmen as guide to
the geysers, and on his return he idled four weeks on the wharves,
looking at the foreign seamen as they arrived by the boats. The fame
of his exploit at Thingvellir had brought him a troop of admirers,
and what he wanted for his pleasure he never lacked. But necessity
began to touch him at home, and then he hinted to Rachel that her
father was rich. She had borne his indifference to her degradation,
she had not murmured at the idleness that pinched them, but at that
word something in her heart seemed to break. She bent her head and
said nothing. He went on to hint that she should go to her father,
who seeing her need would surely forgive her. Then her proud spirit
could brook no more. "Rather than darken my father's doors again,"
she said, "I will starve on a crust of bread and a drop of water."

Things did not mend, and Stephen began to cast down his eyes in shame
when Rachel looked at him. Never a word of blame she spoke, but he
reproached himself and talked of his old mother at Stappen. She was
the only one who could do any good with him. She knew him and did not
spare him. When she was near he worked sometimes, and did not drink
too much. He must send for her.

Rachel raised no obstacle, and one day the old mother came, perched
upon a bony, ragged-eared pony, and with all her belongings on the
pack behind her. She was a little, hard featured woman; and at the
first sight of her seamed and blotted face Rachel's spirit sank.

The old woman was active and restless. Two days after her arrival she
was at work at her old trade of splitting and drying the stock-fish.
All the difference that the change had made for her was that she was
working on the beach at Reykjavik instead of the beach at Stappen,
and living with her son and her son's wife instead of alone.

Her coming did not better the condition of Rachel. She had measured
her new daughter-in-law from head to foot at their first me