Still Helen would have had him forget all such matters in connection with her.

They were one beyond obligation.

She had given him herself, and what were bank-notes after that?
But he thought of her always as an angel who had taken him in, to comfort, and bless, and cherish him with love, that he might the better do the work of his God and hers; therefore his obligation to her was his glory.
"Your ponies go splendidly to-day, Helen," he said, as admiringly he watched how her hands on the reins seemed to mold their movements.
They were the tiniest, daintiest things, of the smallest ever seen in harness, but with all the ways of big horses, therefore amusing in their very grace.

They were the delight of the children of Glaston and the villages round.
"Why _will_ you call them _my_ ponies, Thomas ?" returned his wife, just sufficiently vexed to find it easy to pretend to be cross.

"I don't see what good I have got by marrying you, if every thing is to be mine all the same!" "Don't be unreasonable, my Helen!" said the curate, looking into the lovely eyes whose colors seemed a little blown about in their rings.
"Don't you see it is my way of feeling to myself how much, and with what a halo about them, they are mine?
If I had bought them with my own money, I should hardly care for them.