But one didn't want it to. The
wrongness had a character all its own. The wrongness was right--at any
rate after Mary had hit on it for William. As a spinster, she would, I
think, have been happiest in a trim modern villa. But it was a belief
of hers that she had married a man of strange genius. She had married
him for himself, not for his genius; but this added grace in him was a
thing to be reckoned with, ever so much; a thing she must coddle to
the utmost in a proper setting. She was a year older than he (though,
being so small and slight, she looked several years younger), and in
her devotion the maternal instinct played a great part. William, as I
have already conveyed to you, was not greatly gifted. Mary's instinct,
in this one matter, was at fault. But endearingly, rightly at fault.
And, as William was outwardly odd, wasn't it well that his home should
be so, too? On the inside, comfort was what Mary always aimed at for
him, and achieved.
The ground floor had all been made one room, into which you stepped
straight from the open air. Quite a long big room (or so it seemed,
from the lowness of the ceiling), and well-freshened in its antiquity,
with rush-mats here and there on the irregular red tiles, and very
white whitewash on the plaster between the rafters.
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