fiddle away hastily,
damning the bridge of it at the same time in loud but hurried tones,
with the idea of covering any eccentricity which the wife might have
noticed in his actions. "Must 'a' got a touch o' sun," he muttered
to himself. He sat down, fumbled with knife, pipe, and tobacco, and
presently stole a furtive glance over his shoulder at his wife.

The washed-out little woman was still sewing, but stitching blindly, for
great tears were rolling down her worn cheeks.

Johnny, white-faced on account of the heat, stood close behind her,
one hand on her shoulder and the other clenched on the table; but the
clenched hand shook as badly as the loose one.

"Good God! What is the matter, Mary? You're sick!" (They had had little
or no experience of illness.) "Tell me, Mary--come now! Has the boys
been up to anything?"

"No, Johnny; it's not that."

"What is it then? You're taken sick! What have you been doing with
yourself? It might be fever. Hold up a minute. You wait here quiet while
I roost out the boys and send 'em for the doctor and someone----"

"No! no! I'm not sick, John. It's only a turn. I'll be all right in a
minute."

He shifted his hand to her head, which she dropped suddenly, with a
life-weary sigh, against his side.

"Now then!" cried Johnny, wildly, "don't you faint or go into
disterricks, Mary! It'll upset the boys; think of the boys! It's only
the heat--you're only takin' queer."

"It's not that; you ought to know me better than that. It
was--I--Johnny, I was only thinking--we've been married twenty years
to-night--an'--it's New Year's Night!"

"And I've never thought of it!" said Johnny (in the afterwards). "Shows
what a God-forgotten selection will make of a man. She'd thought of it
all the time, and was waiting for it to strike me. Why! I'd agreed to go
and play at a darnce at Old Pipeclay School-house all night--that very
night--and leave her at home because she hadn't asked to come; and
it never struck me to ask her--at home by herself in that hole--for
twenty-five bob. And I only stopped at home because I'd got the hump,
and knew they'd want me bad at the school."

They sat close together on the long stool by the table, shy and awkward
at first; and she clung to him at opening of thunder, and they started
apart guiltily when the first great drops sounded like footsteps on the
gravel outside, just as they'd done one night-time before--twenty years
before.

If it was dark before, it