Mrs. Maynard’s silence seemed insufficient to none but Mrs. Breen and her own husband.  The former vigorously denounced its want of logic to Grace as all but criminal, though she had no objection to Mr. Maynard.  He, in fact, treated her with a filial respect which went far to efface her preconceptions; and he did what he could to retrieve himself from the disgrace of a separation in Grace’s eyes.  Perhaps he thought that the late situation was known to her alone, when he casually suggested, one day, that Mrs. Maynard was peculiar.

“Yes,” said Grace mercifully; “but she has been out of health so long.  That makes a great difference.  She’s going to be better now.”

“Oh, it’s going to come out all right in the end,” he said, with his unbuoyant hopefulness, “and I reckon I’ve got to help it along.  Why, I suppose every man’s a trial at times, doctor?”

“I dare say.  I know that every woman is,” said the girl.

“Is that so?  Well, may be you’re partly right.  But you don’t suppose but what a man generally begins it, do you?  There was Adam, you know.  He did n’t pull the apple; but he fell off into that sleep, and woke up with one of his ribs dislocated, and that’s what really commenced the trouble.  If it had n’t been for Adam, there would n’t have been any woman, you know; and you could n’t blame her for what happened after she got going?” There was no gleam of insinuation in his melancholy eye, and Grace listened without quite knowing what to make of it all.  “And then I suppose he was n’t punctual at meals, and stood round talking politics at night, when he ought to have been at home with his family?”

“Who?” asked Grace.

“Adam,” replied Mr. Maynard lifelessly.  “Well, they got along pretty well outside,” he continued.  “Some of the children didn’t turn out just what you might have expected; but raising children is mighty uncertain business.  Yes, they got along.”  He ended his parable with a sort of weary sigh, as if oppressed by experience.  Grace looked at his slovenly figure, his smoky complexion, and the shaggy outline made by his untrimmed hair and beard, and she wondered how Louise could marry him; but she liked him, and she was willing to accept for all reason the cause of unhappiness at which he further hinted.  “You see, doctor, an incompatibility is a pretty hard thing to manage.  You can’t forgive it like a real grievance.  You have to try other things, and find out that there are worse things, and then you come back to it and stand it.  We’re talking Wyoming and cattle range, now, and Mrs. Maynard is all for the new deal; it’s going to make us healthy, wealthy, and wise.  Well, I suppose the air will be good for her, out there.  You doctors are sending lots of your patients our way, now.”  The gravity with which he always assumed that Grace was a physician in full and regular practice would have had its edge of satire, coming from another; but from him, if it was ironical, it was also caressing, and she did not resent it.  “I’ve had some talk with your colleague, here, Dr. Mulbridge, and he seems to think it will be the best thing for her.  I suppose you agree with him?”