“I knew it!” cried his wife furiously. “It is just what he would say! Give up everything that we have worked and toiled for! Give up the money we have honestly earned, just when at last we have succeeded in getting wealthy and now own one of the most prosperous business concerns in the Valley! And what, pray, what does he offer you in return?”

“He will take us into his own service,” answered her husband in a low tone.

“Make us shepherds—shepherds!” Mrs. Bitterness almost choked on the words. “And give us a four-roomed cottage, and a cat, and a dog, and some chickens! Bah!”

As she spoke, Murmuring looked out of the window and surveyed the domain over which she ruled so competently and with such undisputed sway. She looked at the well filled flower garden, the clipped hedges of the bowling green, at the river and the gaily colored boats. Down the passage, through the half-opened door, she could hear the clink of glasses in the barroom and the sound of voices and occasional laughter. She could distinguish the genial tones of the new bartender, a capable and experienced man named Sharp, quite different, luckily, from that weak boy, Moody. She could hear the girls in the kitchen laughing together as they ate their early meal in preparation for the busy midday hour, and she visualized the parking place filled with cars and motorcycles.

All these things they had achieved by sheer hard work and competence (for no one could deny, thought Murmuring complacently, that they were a smart and competent couple) and within the few years since their marriage had transformed the shabby old “pub” which Bitterness had inherited from his father into this attractive, modern, and extremely well patronized hotel. And now here was her husband actually mad enough, under the influence of that utterly impossible Shepherd, to suggest that they would never know peace and happiness and prosperity until they gave it all up! Until they sank to the position of hired shepherds! It was madness! It was abominable folly! It was worse!

She looked at her husband, at his sad, miserable face, at the strange new pain and unrest in his eyes, and for a moment her heart quailed at the fearful possibility of losing her kingdom altogether. Then she rallied her forces and determined that she would not surrender any part of it. She reminded herself that she was the stronger of the two, and with her lay the power to prevent such a catastrophe. So she forced a laugh, as though suddenly she was amused by the whole thing and chose to treat his words as a joke.