And by these signs I knew that she had
taken herself again in grip and forbade reference to the agony
through which she had passed.
Quickly she turned the conversation to the Tuftons. What had
happened? I told her meagrely. She insisted on fuller details. So,
flogged by her, I related what I had gleaned from Marigold's
wooden reports. He always conveyed personal information as though
he were giving evidence against a defaulter. I had to start all
over again. Apparently this had happened: Mrs. Tufton had arrayed
herself, not in sackcloth and ashes, for that was apparently her
normal attire, but in an equivalent, as far as a symbol of
humility was concerned; namely, in decent raiment, and had sought
her husband's forgiveness. There had been a touching scene in the
scullery which Mrs. Marigold had given up to them for the sake of
privacy, in which the lady had made tearful promises of reform and
the corporal had magnanimously passed the sponge over the terrible
reckoning on her slate. Would he then go home to his penitent
wife? But the gallant fellow, with the sturdy common-sense for
which the British soldier is renowned, contrasted the clover in
which he was living here with the aridness of Flowery End, and
declined to budge.
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