She allowed the pretty trifles of agricultural domesticity to glide by her as sorry details, and had it not been for the children Darton's house would have seemed but little brighter than it had been before.
This led to occasional unpleasantness, until Darton sometimes declared to himself that such endeavours as his to rectify early deviations of the heart by harking back to the old point mostly failed of success.

'Perhaps Johns was right,' he would say.

'I should have gone on with Sally.
Better go with the tide and make the best of its course than stem it at the risk of a capsize.' But he kept these unmelodious thoughts to himself, and was outwardly considerate and kind.
This somewhat barren tract of his life had extended to less than a year and a half when his ponderings were cut short by the loss of the woman they concerned.

When she was in her grave he thought better of her than when she had been alive; the farm was a worse place without her than with her, after all.

No woman short of divine could have gone through such an experience as hers with her first husband without becoming a little soured.