d do it, cost
what it might, to be honoured once again by my dear Dick."

"This comes of living in a theatre all her life," thinks I. And indeed,
in this, as in other matters yet to be told, the teaching of the stage
was but too evident.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

_All agree to go out to Spain again in search of our old jollity._

Another week passed by, and then Dawson, shortsighted as he was in his
selfishness, began to perceive that things were not coming all right, as
he had expected. Once or twice when I went into his shop, I caught him
sitting idle before his lathe, with a most woe-begone look in his face.

"What's amiss, Jack?" asks I, one day when I found him thus.

He looked to see that the door was shut, and then says he, gloomily:

"She don't sing as she used to, Kit; she don't laugh hearty."

I hunched my shoulders.

"She doesn't play us any of her old pranks," continues he. "She don't
say one thing and go and do t'other the next moment, as she used to do.
She's too good."

What could I say to one who was fond enough to think that the summer
would come back at his wish and last for ever?

"She's not the same, Kit," he goes on. "No, not by twenty years. One
would say she is older than I am, yet she's scarce the age of woman. And
I do see she gets more pale and thin each day. D'ye think she's fretting
for _him_?"

"Like enough, Jack," says I. "What would you? He's her husband, and 'tis
as if he was dead to her. She cannot be a maid again. 'Tis young to be a
widow, and no hope of being wife ever more."

"God forgive me," says he, hanging his head.

"We did it for the best," says I. "We could not foresee this."

"'Twas so natural to think we should be happy again being all together.
Howsoever," adds he, straightening himself with a more manful vigour,
"we will do something to chase these black dogs hence."

On his lathe was the egg cup he had been turning for Moll; he snapped it
off from the chuck and flung it in the litter of chips and shavings, as
if 'twere the emblem of his past folly.

It so happened that night that Moll could eat no supper, pleading for
her excuse that she felt sick.

"What is it, chuck?" says Jack, setting down his knife and drawing his
chair beside Moll's.

"The vapours, I think," says she, with a faint smile.

"Nay," says he, slipping his arm about her waist and drawing her to him.
"My Moll hath no such modish humours. 'Tis something else. I have
watched ye, an