“You going up!  This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“I meant to tell ’e to-day.  Mother is willing and I’m awnly tu glad.  A man’s a poor left-handed thing ’bout a house.  I’d do more ’n that for Will.”

“Pity he doesn’t think and do something for you.  Surely a little of this money—?”

“Doan’t ’e touch on that, Clem.  Us had a braave talk ’pon it, for he wanted to make over two hundred pound to me, but I wouldn’t dream of it, and you wouldn’t have liked me tu.  You ’m the last to envy another’s fair fortune.”

“I do envy any man fortune.  Why should I starve, waiting for you, and—?”

“Hush!” she said, as though she had spoken to a little child.  “I won’t hear no wild words to-day in all this gude gold sunshine.”

“God damn everything!” he burst out.  “What a poor, impotent wretch He’s made me—­a thing to bruise its useless hands beating the door that will never open!  It maddens me—­especially when all the world’s happy, like to-day—­all happy but me.  And you so loyal and true!  What a fool you are to stick to me and let me curse you all your life!”

“Doan’t ’e, doan’t ’e, Clem,” said Chris wearily.  She was growing well accustomed to these ebullitions.  “Doan’t grudge Will his awn.  Our turn will come, an’ perhaps sooner than we think for.  Look round ’pon the sweet fresh airth an’ budding flowers.  Spring do put heart into a body.  We ’m young yet, and I’ll wait for ’e if ‘t is till the crack o’ doom.”

“Life’s such a cursed short thing at best—­just a stormy day between two nights, one as long as past time, the other all eternity.  Have you seen a mole come up from the ground, wallow helplessly a moment or two, half blind in the daylight, then sink back into the earth, leaving only a mound?  That’s our life, yours and mine; and Fate grudges that even these few poor hours, which make the sum of it, should be spent together.  Think how long a man and woman can live side by side at best.  Yet every Sunday of your life you go to church and babble about a watchful, loving Maker!”

“I doan’t know, Clem.  You an’ me ban’t everybody.  You’ve told me yourself as God do play a big game, and it doan’t become this man or that woman to reckon their-selves more important than they truly be.”

“A great game, yes; but a cursed poor game—­for a God.  The counters don’t matter, I know; they’ll soon be broken up and flung away; and the sooner the better.  It’s living hell to be born into a world where there’s no justice—­none for king or tinker.”

“Sit alongside of me and smell the primrosen an’ watch thicky kingfisher catching the li’l trout.  I doan’t like ’e in these bitter moods, Clem, when your talk’s all dead ashes.”

He sat by her and looked out over the river.  It was flooded in sunlight, fringed with uncurling green.

“I’m sick and weary of life without you.  ’Conscious existence is a failure,’ and the man who found that out and said it was wise.  I wish I was a bird or beast—­or nothing.  All the world is mating but you and me.  Nature hates me because I survive from year to year, not being fit to.  The dumb things do her greater credit than ever I can.  The—­”