"How's this?" he questioned.
"Our mare's gone lame," Mrs Sutton answered, "and as I'm bound to get
about I'm bound to walk."
He descended instantly from the dogcart. "Climb up," he said, "and tell
me where you want to go to."
"Nay, nay."
"Climb up," he repeated, and he helped her into the dogcart.
"Well," she said, laughing, "what must be, must. I was trudging home,
and I hope it isn't out of your way."
"It isn't," he said; "I'm for Toft End, and I should have driven up
Trafalgar Road anyhow."
Mrs Sutton was one of James Peake's ideals. He worshipped this small
frail woman of fifty-five, whose soft eyes were the mirror of as candid
a soul as was ever prisoned in Staffordshire clay. More than forty years
ago he had gone to school with her, and the remembrance of having kissed
the pale girl when she was crying over a broken slate was still vivid in
his mind. For nearly half a century she had remained to him exactly that
same ethereal girl. The sole thing about her that puzzled him was that
she should have found anything attractive in the man whom she allowed to
marry her--Alderman Sutton. In all else he regarded her as an angel.
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