He began to explain his reasons for taking the house; that he had naturally more acquaintance with worldly matters than she had; that whatever their income, it was advisable for young people to begin housekeeping prudently, since it was easy to increase small beginnings, while of all outward domestic horrors there was nothing greater than the horror of running into debt. When he talked thus, at once with wisdom and gentleness, Agatha began to forgive him.
“After all,” said she, brightening, “your prudence--which I might call by a harder word, but I'll be good now--your prudence is only restraining me in my little pleasures, and I don't much mind. But if you ever tried to restrain me in a matter of kindness, as you did yesterday, only I guessed the motive”--
“There--don't look so startled and displeased. I saw you did not like the _éclat_ of political charities. But another time, if I want to do good--like Anne Valery, only in a very, very much smaller way--Hark! what is that noise?”
It was a decent-looking working-man, standing out in the pouring rain, watching them through the panes, and rattling angrily at the locked conservatory-door.
“What a fierce eye! It looks quite wolfish. What can he want with us?”
“I will go and see. Some labourer wanting work, probably; but the fellow has no business to come beckoning and interrupting. Stay here, Agatha.”
“No--I will come with you.” And she tripped after her husband, the momentary content of her heart creating a longing to do good--a sort of tithe of happiness thankfully paid to Heaven.
Nathanael unfastened the glass-door, not without annoyance; for, unlike his wife, _his_ joy-tithe was not yet due.
“Indeed! Are you after work? You don't look like one of the clay-cutters. Where do you come from?”
“I be Darset, I be; but I comed fra Carnwall.”
“From where?” asked Agatha, puzzled by the provincialism, and attracted at once by the man's intelligent face, and by a keen, misery-stricken, hungry look, which she had truly called “wolfish.”
“I be comed fra the miners in Carnwall,” reiterated the man, raising his voice threateningly. “They sent I back to Darset to see some o' th' Harpers.”
“You must go in, Agatha; it is cold. I cannot have you standing here. Go--quick.” And Agatha was astonished to see how pallid and eager her husband looked, and how anxious he seemed to get her out of the way.