No, while life lasted, he would hold to her.  He would never shake her off now.  Even if she were old and ugly, useless to him, a dead-weight upon his ascending progress, he would be true to her now.  Even if his love died, the memory of it would keep him still hers.  And she thought of the pity in him, as well as the strength.  The man who could not resist the appeal of a poor little stray dog would not break faith with the mother of his children; and she thought, “Yes, whatever I say to him, I know really and truly that it was a nobler, better thing to risk all than to allow even a dog to perish.  And I love him for not having hesitated then, even when I pray him not to do it again.”

Looking at him, she saw the gray hair that she had just now denied; and to her eyes these gray feathers at each side of the forehead not only increased his dignity, but gave him a fresh charm.  The gray hair made him somehow more romantic.  In her eyes his face was always growing more beautiful, always refining itself, always losing something that had been rather coarsely massive and gaining something that was new, spiritualized, and subtle.

“What are you examining me like that for, Mav?  A penny for your thoughts.”

“Shall I tell you truly?” and she laughed.  “I was thinking if your looks continue to improve at this rate all the girls will get falling in love with you.”

“Go along with you.”

XVI

In this manner the full and happy years began to glide past them.  Their prosperity was now firmly established; the business grew; and money came in so nicely that Mrs. Dale’s mortgage had been paid off and her two thousand pounds invested in gilt-edged securities, while Dale hoped very shortly to discharge the remainder of his obligation to Mr. Bates.  They were, however, as economical as ever in their own way of life, although they permitted themselves some license in the generosity they had begun to practise with regard to their less fortunate neighbors.  But they found, as so many have found before them, that in personal charity a little money goes a long way, and that the claims of the very poor, although sometimes noisy, are rarely excessive.  Naturally they had to be careful for the sake of their children, the security of whose future must be the first consideration.  Dale had promised the baby boy in his cradle “the advantages of a lib’ral education,” and he intended to act up to this promise largely.

“It is my wish,” he said, “that the two of them shall enjoy all that I was myself deprived of.”