"My thoughts were far away," he said, at last.
His wife bridled and said, "Oh, indeed!" Mr.Chalk's mother, dead some ten years before, had taken a strange pride--possibly as a protest against her only son's appearance--in hinting darkly at a stormy and chequered past.

Pressed for details she became more mysterious still, and, saying that "she knew what she knew," declined to be deprived of the knowledge under any consideration.

She also informed her daughter-in-law that "what the eye don't see the heart don't grieve," and that it was better to "let bygones be bygones," usually winding up with the advice to the younger woman to keep her eye on Mr.Chalk without letting him see it.
"Peckham Rye is a long way off, certainly," added the indignant Mrs.
Chalk, after a pause.

"It's a pity you haven't got something better to think of, at your time of life, too." Mr.Chalk flushed.

Peckham Rye was one of the nuisances bequeathed by his mother.
"I was thinking of the sea," he said, loftily.
Mrs.Chalk pounced.