In his own way he had always loved her more than anything else in his whole life. John would be uncomfortable with that word love. He's like a lot of Irish farmers in that way. He's like a lot of Irishmen generally in that way. Love is something that you hear spoken about in a spiritual way in the chapels on Sundays.
Love is something which is in the library books and paperbacks that women read.
Love is something related to young fellows and young lassies that John would often flush out of the old cottage on that edge of his farm nearest town. Watching them scurrying away, red-faced, John Saunders would know that whatever drove them into the cottage with half its roof fallen in was love of the calf variety and probably more closely related, in at least some cases, to the powerful lustings of his cattle and his sheep. Until Mary Ellen came along John was never in love. Not like that. He was not a man that had ever thought of marrying.