She clung to what she had with
the tenacity of a mollusc. What she had was in the main Paul, and
her affection for him was a very real human quality in her.
He was exactly what she would have chosen had she been allowed at
the beginning a free choice. He was lazy and good-tempered so that
he yielded to her on every possible point, he was absolutely
orthodox and never shocked her by a thought or a word out of the
ordinary, he really loved her and believed in her and said, quite
truly, that he would not have known what to do without her.
It seems strange then that it should have been in the main her
urgency that led to the acquisition of Maggie. During the last year
she had begun to be seriously uneasy. Things were not what they had
been. Mrs. Constantine and others in the parish were challenging her
authority, even the Choir boys were scarcely so subservient as they
had been, and, worst of all, Paul himself was strangely restive and
unquiet. He talked at times of getting married, wondered whether
she, Grace, wouldn't like some one to help her in the house, and
even, on one terrifying occasion, suggested leaving Skeaton
altogether.
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