And bring Theo," he added suddenly.
Then he rose. "Come, we had better start to walk back." She obeyed in
silence.
"If I had not had genius," he continued as they reached the bottom of
the slope and turned homewards, "I should be now--what? A Norman peasant
in a black blouse driving, probably, a char-a-bancs to sell my fruit--or
my corn. I could never have been a gamekeeper like my father, for I
cannot kill. And if you, then, had come to Falaise and gone to the
market, you might have bought a pennyworth of cherries of me. And all
this might have been if I had not, one day, heard an old half-witted
blind man play a cracked fiddle on the high road, thirty years ago!"
She frowned, for she hated this kind of talk. It was too true, and it
hurt her baser pride, even while her nobler pride rejoiced in the very
humbleness of his origin because it emphasised his present greatness.
"But--you are you, and I am only--me," she returned, ungrammatical but
proudly humble.
He turned, his face flushing brilliantly. "Then you are proud of me?" he
cried.
Danger again. After a long pause, which visibly hurt him, she returned
with a smile, "Of course I am. Who would not be proud of such a
father-in-law?"
Half an hour later it was all over, the wonderful day was finished, and
to Brigit's amazement she was more than a little glad.
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