“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mavis.  “I can’t give any promise.  I must do whatever Auntie tells me.  I can’t go against her wishes.”

Yet somehow he felt sure that she would be his.  A thousand slimy, humbugging old aunts should not keep them apart.  From Portsmouth he wrote a letter to his sweetheart on every day of the year for three years—­except on those days of joyous leave when he could get away and talk to her instead of writing to her.  At the end of the three years the postmastership at Rodchurch became vacant, and he boldly applied for the place.

His life just then was almost too glorious to be true.  All difficulties and dangers seemed to melt away in a sort of warm haze of rapture.  Mrs. Petherick no longer opposed the marriage; Mr. Barradine, at the zenith of political power, exerted his influence; the postmastership was obtained.  To top up, Dale made the not unpleasing discovery that Mavis was an heiress as well as an orphan.  She had two hundred pounds of her very own, “which came in uncommon handy for the furnishing.”

And his education did not cease with wedlock.  Mavis was always improving him, especially in regard to diction.  He was pleased to think that he made very few slips nowadays—­an “h” elided here and there; the vowels still rather broad, more particularly the Hampshire “a”; and one or two unchanged words, such as “boosum.”  But these microscopic faults were of no consequence, and Mav had stopped teasing him about them.  She only warned him of what he knew was Gospel truth—­that the little failures were more frequent under hurry or excitement, and that when deeply moved he had a tendency to lapse badly toward the ancient peasant lingo.

Nothing to worry about, however.  It merely indicated that he must never speak on important matters without due preparation.  He would be all right up there, knowing to a syllable what he wished to say; and he thought with swelling pride of comparatively recent public speeches and the praise that he had received from them.  After the Parish meeting last January the Rodhaven District Courier had said, “With a few happy remarks Mr. Dale adverted again to the fallacy of plunging the village into the expense of a costly fire-engine without first ascertaining the reliability of the water supply.”  His very words, almost verbatim “Happy remarks!” A magistrate on the bench could not have been better reported or more handsomely praised.

The reviewing of these manifold bounties of Providence had produced a sedative effect; but now he grew restless once more.  He felt that twinge of doubt, the pin-prick of illogical fear which during the last eighteen hours had again and again pierced his armor of self-confidence.  Suppose things went against him!  No, that would be too monstrous; that would mean no justice left in England, the whole fabric of society gone rotten and crumbling to dust.

The spaces between the blinds and window-frames were white instead of gray; the sun had risen; presently the whole room was visible.