"'You know, Mr. Gedge, that it simply won't do.' That was all. But it was
the way such a man says them."
"I'm glad then," Mrs. Gedge frankly averred, "that he _is_ such a man. How
did you ever think it _could_ do?"
"Well, it was my critical sense. I didn't ever know I had one--till They
came and (by putting me here) waked it up in me. Then I had somehow, don't
you see? to live with it; and I seemed to feel that, with one thing and
another, giving it time and in the long run, it might, it _ought_ to, come
out on top of the heap. Now that's where, he says, it simply won't 'do.' So
I must put it--I _have_ put it--at the bottom."
"A very good place then for a critical sense!" And Isabel, more placidly
now, folded her work. "_If_, that is, you can only keep it there. If it
doesn't struggle up again."
"It can't struggle." He was still before the fire, looking round at the
warm low room, peaceful in the lamplight, with the hum of the kettle for
the ear, with the curtain drawn over the leaded casement, a short moreen
curtain artfully chosen by Isabel for the effect of the olden time, its
virtue of letting the light within show ruddy to the street. "It's dead,"
he went on; "I killed it just now."