ned o' yo."

"'Oo says she's freetened?"

"I saays it. She's thot freetened thot she'd wash yore sweet'eart's
dirty cleathes sooner 'n marry yo."

"She doesn't wash them?"

"Shea does. T' kape yore baaby, Jim Greatorex."

With that she left him.

* * * * *

For the next three months Greatorex was more than ever uneasy in his
soul. The Sunday after Maggie's outburst he had sat all morning and
afternoon in his parlor with his father's Bible. He had not even tried
to see Alice Cartaret.

For three months, off and on, in the intervals of seeing Alice, he
longed, with an intense and painful longing, for his God. He longed
for him just because he felt that he was utterly separated from him by
his sin. He wanted the thing he couldn't have and wasn't fit to have.
He wanted it, just as he wanted Alice Cartaret.

And by his sin he did not mean his getting drunk. Greatorex did not
think of God as likely to take his getting drunk very seriously,
any more than he had seemed to take Maggie and Essy seriously. For
Greatorex measured God's reprobation by his own repentance.

His real offense against God was his offense against Alice Cartaret.
He had got drunk in order to forget it.

But that resource would henceforth be denied him. He was not going
to get drunk any more, because he knew that if he did Alice Cartaret
wouldn't marry him.

Meanwhile he nourished his soul on its own longing, on the Psalms of
David and on the Book of Job.

Greatorex would have made a happy saint. But he was a most lugubrious
sinner.

XLVII

The train from Durlingham rolled slowly into Reyburn station.

Gwenda Cartaret leaned from the window of a third class carriage and
looked up and down the platform. She got out, handing her suit-case
to a friendly porter. Nobody had come to meet her. They were much too
busy up at the Vicarage.

From the next compartment there alighted a group of six persons, a
lady in widow's weeds, an elderly lady and gentleman who addressed her
affectionately as "Fanny, dear," and (obviously belonging to the pair)
a very young man and a still younger woman.

There was also a much older man, closely attached to them, but not
quite so obviously related.

These six people also looked up and down the platform, expecting to
be met. They were interested in Gwenda Cartaret. They gazed at her as
they had already glanced, surreptitiously and kindly, on the platform
at Durlingham.