“Meaning her?”

“Yes, who else should we mean?”

“I’ve never said a word of love to her in my life.”

“Oh, how,” cried Mavis, “can you make such a pretense?”

“Because it’s the truth.”

“But,” said Mavis, indignantly, “you’ve made her fond of you.  You’ve courted her.”

The higgler distinctly preened himself, and smiled archly.  “Ah, there’s a language of the eyes, which speaks perhaps when the lips are sealed.”

Mavis was angry and disgusted.  “You, a married man!”

Dale, outraged too, spoke with increasing sternness.  “You don’t deny you’ve got a wife?”

The higgler answered very gravely.  “Mr. Dale, that’s my misfortune, not my fault.  But my wife isn’t going to last forever, and the day she’s gone—­that is, the day after I’ve buried her decently—­I shall come here to Mary Parsons and say ’Mary’—­mind you, I’ve never called her Mary yet—­I shall say, ’Mary, my lips are unsealed, and I ask you to be my true and lawful second wife.’”

They could make nothing of the higgler.

“It’s seven years,” he went on, “since Doctor Hollin said to me, ’I have to warn you Mrs. Druitt isn’t going to make old bones.’  However, we find it a long job.  There’s a proverb, isn’t there?  Creaking doors!”

Mavis was inexpressibly shocked.  “How can you talk of your wife so?  Have you no feelings for her?”

“Mrs. Dale,” said the higgler, solemnly, “I married my first wife for money, and I’ve been punished for my mistake.  That’s why I made up my mind I’d marry next time for love—­in choosing a wholesome maiden and not asking what she’d got sewed in her petticoat or harbored in the bank;” and, nodding, he again gave his curious self-satisfied wink.  “Mr. Dale, you tell her to wait patiently.  I’ll be true to her, if she’ll be true to me.”  Then he rose, and smiling sheepishly, once more addressed Mrs. Dale.  “The purpose of my call this morning was to say I shall have some good bacon next week.”

Mavis refused the bacon, and Dale said a few words of stern rebuke.

“I can tell you, Mr. Druitt, I take a very poor opinion of your manhood and proper feeling.”

Then Mavis interposed to check her husband.  The fact was, she felt baffled by the situation and utterly at a loss as to what would be the best way of dealing with it.  Whatever one might think of Mr. Druitt one’s self, there was Mary to be considered.  What would ultimately be best for her?  The man was warm; and Mary, who was not growing younger, said she liked him.

“I’ll wish you good morning,” said the higgler.

Then, when they thought he had been long gone and Mavis was talking to Mary, he put in his head at the kitchen doorway.

“Will this make any difference?” he asked shyly.  “Should I call again—­or do you forbid me the house?”

The three women, Mavis, Mary and Mrs. Goudie, all looked at one another, quite perplexed.