howed, funny old woman as she was, that she was not without a sort
of blind insight.

"I suppose it's all right, boy," she said, "and it sounds silly to say
about a lot of harmless lines and flowers, but it seems to your old
mother that there's something wrong about that paper,--something almost
wicked in it. It reminds me of that nasty music you and Jenny are so
fond of playing."

Here Theophil enveloped her in a huge hug, and laughingly mocked her
with playful caresses, smiling to himself all the same. For the music
she had referred to was Dvorak.

CHAPTER XI

A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY

Meanwhile, as New Zion moved and hummed and whizzed, and as "The Dawn"
went on dawning week by week,--you couldn't expect the dawn oftener than
once a week in Coalchester,--the love of Jenny and Theophil grew more
and more perfect.

There was a long while to wait yet before Jenny was to bear what seemed
to her the finest of all names, for old Mrs. Talbot, easily manageable
as a rule, had a way of quietly putting her foot down on occasion that
would have surprised you. Jenny was only just passed nineteen, and was
no fit wife for any man yet, least of all for a great sprawling fellow
like that. Let her get a little more flesh on her bones, something more
than all spirit and nerves, let her get well turned twenty, and it might
be thought of, but not now.

No! it's no use coming with your nonsense, you silly big fellow! You
know when the soft old mother says a thing, she means it.

So it proved. Old Mrs. Talbot on this point remained a homely form of
adamant. However, the lovers were not badly off. Living in the same
house, they saw almost as much of each other as if they had been
married, and from the evenings she spent there, Jenny had come to regard
Theophil's room and his books as hers too.

She had developed wonderfully in these months, had Jenny. She was a real
little great man's wife now; and as Theophil looked at her, with her lit
eager face, her whole soul so alive to help him in however humble a way,
her whole life his, his, his,--such love seemed almost tragic in its
very beauty and joy. It was so irremediably--love. At times he almost
trembled before it. He would almost chide her with its divine
completeness.

What if he were to be taken from her? Oughtn't she to keep just a little
of herself for foothold? We ought all to belong to ourselves as well as
to another. It was such a risk. Suppose he were to die, Jenn