did mother. Shouldn't wonder if he didn't keep her, either, if she don't suit
better. She needn't 'a' put on such airs with me, for I'm goin' to stick to
him."


Chapter XXIX. Husband and Wife in Trouble

Like many others with simple, strong natures, Holcroft could not be
wrong-headed moderately, and his thoughts, once started in a direction were
apt to carry him much farther than the cause warranted. Engrossed in painful
and rather bitter musings, he paid no heed to Jane and almost forgot his
errand to town. "I was a fool to ask that question," he thought. "I was
getting silly and sentimental with my talk about the picture and all that.
She laughed at me and reminded me I was wasting time. Of course she can't
like an old, hard-featured man like me. I'm beginning to understand her now.
She made a business marriage with me and means to live up to her agreement.
She's honest; she feels I've done her a real kindness in giving her a home,
and she's willing to be as self-sacrificing as the day is long to make it up
to me. I wish she wasn't so grateful; there's no occasion for it. I don't
want her to feel that every pleasant word and every nice act is so much toward
paying a debt. If there was any balance in my favor it was squared up long
ago, and I was willing to call it even from the start. She's made me like her
for her own sake and not on account of what she does for me, and that's what I
had in mind. But she's my superior in every way; she's growing to be a pretty
as a picture, and I suppose I appear like a rather rough customer. Well, I
can't help if, but it rather goes against me to have her think, 'I've married
him and I'm going to do my duty by him, just as I agreed.' She'll do her duty
by this Jane in the same self-sacrificing spirit, and will try to make it
pleasant for the child just because it's right and because she herself was
taken out of trouble. That's the shape her religion takes. 'Tisn't a common