But since I have
been ill, I have often recalled your words. Poor Winifred! You did not
think then that you would have an invalid husband on your hands. Well,
you were not intended for sick-room nursing, and you have not tried to
be what you were not intended for. Perhaps you were right, after all."
"I don't know why you should be so unkind to-day," Mrs. Reffold said,
with pathetic patience. "I can't understand you. You have never spoken
like this before."
"No," he said; "but I have thought like this before. All the hours you
have left me lonely, I have been thinking like this, with my heart full
of bitterness against you, until that little girl, that Little Brick
came along."
After that, it was some time before he spoke. He was thinking of his
Little Brick, and of all the pleasant hours he had spent with her, and
of the kind, wise words she had spoken to him, an ignorant fellow. She
was something like a companion.
So he went on thinking, and Mrs. Reffold went on embroidering. She was
now feeling herself to be almost a heroine. It is a very easy matter to
make oneself into a heroine or a martyr. Selfish, neglectful? What did
he mean? Oh, it was just part of his illness.
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