injunction, as she took the reins, and shook
them gently, by way of friendly incitement to Speckle.

"I shall just take a turn to the fields against the Stone-pits, Nancy,
and look at the draining," said Godfrey.

"You'll be in again by tea-time, dear?"

"Oh, yes, I shall be back in an hour."

It was Godfrey's custom on a Sunday afternoon to do a little
contemplative farming in a leisurely walk. Nancy seldom accompanied
him; for the women of her generation--unless, like Priscilla, they took
to outdoor management--were not given to much walking beyond their own
house and garden, finding sufficient exercise in domestic duties. So,
when Priscilla was not with her, she usually sat with Mant's Bible
before her, and after following the text with her eyes for a little
while, she would gradually permit them to wander as her thoughts had
already insisted on wandering.

But Nancy's Sunday thoughts were rarely quite out of keeping with the
devout and reverential intention implied by the book spread open before
her. She was not theologically instructed enough to discern very
clearly the relation between the sacred documents of the past which she
opened without method, and her own obscure, simple life; but the spirit
of rectitude, and the sense of responsibility for the effect of her
conduct on others, which were strong elements in Nancy's character, had
made it a habit with her to scrutinize her past feelings and actions
with self-questioning solicitude. Her mind not being courted by a
great variety of subjects, she filled the vacant moments by living
inwardly, again and again, through all her remembered experience,
especially through the fifteen years of her married time, in which her
life and its significance had been doubled. She recalled the small
details, the words, tones, and looks, in the critical scenes which had
opened a new epoch for her by giving her a deeper insight into the
relations and trials of life, or which had called on her for some
little effort of forbearance, or of painful adherence to an imagined or
real duty--asking herself continually whether she had been in any
respect blamable. This excessive rumination and self-questioning is
perhaps a morbid habit inevitable to a mind of much moral sensibility
when shut out from its due share of outward activity and of practical
claims on its affections--inevitable to a noble-hearted, childless
woman, when her lot is narrow. "I can do so little--have I done