By this
time, although Dorcas loved her husband as all wives should, obeying him
in all, or at any rate in most things, she had come to recognise that he
and she were very differently constituted. Of course, she knew that
he was infinitely her superior, and indeed that of most people. Like
everybody else she admired his uprightness, his fixity of purpose and
his devouring energy and believed him to be destined to great things.
Still, to tell the truth, which she often confessed with penitence
upon her knees, on the whole she felt happier, or at any rate more
comfortable, during his occasional absences to which allusion has been
made, when she could have her friends to tea and indulge in human gossip
without being called "worldly."
It only remains to add that her little girl Tabitha, a name she
shortened into Tabbie, was her constant joy, especially as she had no
other children. Tabbie was a bright, fair-haired little thing, clever,
too, with resource and a will of her own, an improved edition of
herself, but in every way utterly unlike her father, a fact that
secretly annoyed him. Everybody loved Tabitha, and Tabitha loved
everybody, not excepting the natives, who adored her. Between the
Kaffirs and Tabitha there was some strong natural bond of sympathy.
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