Summer afternoons I went and sat on a keg in the
blacksmith shop and talked of the same thing with the smith but all
that did me no good.
"When I let myself go I dreamed not of my duty to my family but of
working undisturbed as I do now here in the city in my room in the
evenings and on Sundays."
A sharpness came into the voice of the speaker. He turned to McGregor
and talked vigorously like one making a defence. "My woman was a good
enough sort," he said. "I suppose loving is an art like writing a book
or drawing pictures or making violins. People try to do it and don't
succeed. In the end we threw the job up and just lived together like
most people do. Our lives got mussy and meaningless. That's how it
was.
"Before she married me my wife had been a stenographer in a factory
that made tin cans. She liked that work. She could make her fingers
dance along the keys. When she read a book at home she didn't think
the writer amounted to much if he made mistakes about punctuation. Her
boss was so proud of her that he would brag of her work to visitors
and sometimes would go off fishing leaving the running of the business
in her hands.
"I don't know why she married me. She was happier there and she is
happier back there now. We got to walking together on Sunday evenings
and standing under the trees on side streets, kissing and looking at
each other.
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