An old inhabitant himself, Mr. Dickens would stand a little behind her, smoking his pipe.  She would ask him questions—­who people were—­who now kept Mr. Jones’s shop—­then about the season—­and had Mrs. Dickens tried, whatever it might be—­the words issuing from her lips like crumbs of dry biscuit.

She closed her eyes.  Mr. Dickens took a turn.  The feelings of a man had not altogether deserted him, though as you saw him coming towards you, you noticed how one knobbed black boot swung tremulously in front of the other; how there was a shadow between his waistcoat and his trousers; how he leant forward unsteadily, like an old horse who finds himself suddenly out of the shafts drawing no cart.  But as Mr. Dickens sucked in the smoke and puffed it out again, the feelings of a man were perceptible in his eyes.  He was thinking how Captain Barfoot was now on his way to Mount Pleasant; Captain Barfoot, his master.  For at home in the little sitting-room above the mews, with the canary in the window, and the girls at the sewing-machine, and Mrs. Dickens huddled up with the rheumatics—­at home where he was made little of, the thought of being in the employ of Captain Barfoot supported him.  He liked to think that while he chatted with Mrs. Barfoot on the front, he helped the Captain on his way to Mrs. Flanders.  He, a man, was in charge of Mrs. Barfoot, a woman.

Turning, he saw that she was chatting with Mrs. Rogers.  Turning again, he saw that Mrs. Rogers had moved on.  So he came back to the bath-chair, and Mrs. Barfoot asked him the time, and he took out his great silver watch and told her the time very obligingly, as if he knew a great deal more about the time and everything than she did.  But Mrs. Barfoot knew that Captain Barfoot was on his way to Mrs. Flanders.

Indeed he was well on his way there, having left the tram, and seeing Dods Hill to the south-east, green against a blue sky that was suffused with dust colour on the horizon.  He was marching up the hill.  In spite of his lameness there was something military in his approach.  Mrs. Jarvis, as she came out of the Rectory gate, saw him coming, and her Newfoundland dog, Nero, slowly swept his tail from side to side.

“Oh, Captain Barfoot!” Mrs. Jarvis exclaimed.

“Good-day, Mrs. Jarvis,” said the Captain.

They walked on together, and when they reached Mrs. Flanders’s gate Captain Barfoot took off his tweed cap, and said, bowing very courteously: 

“Good-day to you, Mrs. Jarvis.”

And Mrs. Jarvis walked on alone.

She was going to walk on the moor.  Had she again been pacing her lawn late at night?  Had she again tapped on the study window and cried:  “Look at the moon, look at the moon, Herbert!”

And Herbert looked at the moon.

Mrs. Jarvis walked on the moor when she was unhappy, going as far as a certain saucer-shaped hollow, though she always meant to go to a more distant ridge; and there she sat down, and took out the little book hidden beneath her cloak and read a few lines of poetry, and looked about her.  She was not very unhappy, and, seeing that she was forty-five, never perhaps would be very unhappy, desperately unhappy that is, and leave her husband, and ruin a good man’s career, as she sometimes threatened.