"My
thoughts were far away," he said, at last.
His wife bridled and said, "Oh, indeed!" Mr. Chalk's mother, dead some
ten years before, had taken a strange pride--possibly as a protest
against her only son's appearance--in hinting darkly at a stormy and
chequered past. Pressed for details she became more mysterious still,
and, saying that "she knew what she knew," declined to be deprived of the
knowledge under any consideration. She also informed her daughter-in-law
that "what the eye don't see the heart don't grieve," and that it was
better to "let bygones be bygones," usually winding up with the advice to
the younger woman to keep her eye on Mr. Chalk without letting him see
it.
"Peckham Rye is a long way off, certainly," added the indignant Mrs.
Chalk, after a pause. "It's a pity you haven't got something better to
think of, at your time of life, too."
Mr. Chalk flushed. Peckham Rye was one of the nuisances bequeathed by
his mother.
"I was thinking of the sea," he said, loftily.
Mrs. Chalk pounced. "Oh, Yarmouth," she said, with withering scorn.
Mr. Chalk flushed deeper than before.
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