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, and do perceive you eat less and less.  Tell us what ails you.”

“Well, dear,” says she, “I do believe ’tis idleness is the root of my disorder.”

“Idleness was never wont to have this effect on you.”

“But it does now that I am grown older.  There’s not enough to do.  If I could find some occupation for my thoughts, I should not be so silly.”

“Why, that’s a good thought.  What say you, dear, shall we go a-play-acting again?”

Moll shook her head.

“To be sure,” says he, scratching his jaw, “we come out of that business with no great encouragement to go further in it.  But times are mended since then, and I do hear the world is more mad for diversion now than ever they were before the Plague.”