‘With all my heart, man o’ constancy!’ said Dairyman Johns warmly.  ’I’ve lost most of my genteel fair complexion haymaking this hot weather, ’tis true, but I’ll do your business as well as them that look better.  There be scents and good hair-oil in the world yet, thank God, and they’ll take off the roughest o’ my edge.  I’ll compliment her.  “Better late than never, Sally Hall,” I’ll say.’

‘It is not Sally,’ said Darton hurriedly.  ‘It is young Mrs. Hall.’

Japheth’s face, as soon as he really comprehended, became a picture of reproachful dismay.  ‘Not Sally?’ he said.  ’Why not Sally?  I can’t believe it!  Young Mrs. Hall!  Well, well—­where’s your wisdom?’

Darton shortly explained particulars; but Johns would not be reconciled.  ‘She was a woman worth having if ever woman was,’ he cried.  ’And now to let her go!’

‘But I suppose I can marry where I like,’ said Darton.

‘H’m,’ replied the dairyman, lifting his eyebrows expressively.  ’This don’t become you, Charles—­it really do not.  If I had done such a thing you would have sworn I was a curst no’thern fool to be drawn off the scent by such a red-herring doll-oll-oll.’

Farmer Darton responded in such sharp terms to this laconic opinion that the two friends finally parted in a way they had never parted before.  Johns was to be no groomsman to Darton after all.  He had flatly declined.  Darton went off sorry, and even unhappy, particularly as Japheth was about to leave that side of the county, so that the words which had divided them were not likely to be explained away or softened down.

A short time after the interview Darton was united to Helena at a simple matter-of fact wedding; and she and her little girl joined the boy who had already grown to look on Darton’s house as home.

For some months the farmer experienced an unprecedented happiness and satisfaction.  There had been a flaw in his life, and it was as neatly mended as was humanly possible.  But after a season the stream of events followed less clearly, and there were shades in his reveries.  Helena was a fragile woman, of little staying power, physically or morally, and since the time that he had originally known her—­eight or ten years before—­she had been severely tried.  She had loved herself out, in short, and was now occasionally given to moping.  Sometimes she spoke regretfully of the gentilities of her early life, and instead of comparing her present state with her condition as the wife of the unlucky Hall, she mused rather on what it had been before she took the first fatal step of clandestinely marrying him.  She did not care to please such people as those with whom she was thrown as a thriving farmer’s wife.  She allowed the pretty trifles of agricultural domesticity to glide by her as sorry details, and had it not been for the children Darton’s house would have seemed but little brighter than it had been before.