"Well, you'll make it worth his while to have done so, Jack. If he is taking you now for your mother's sake, he will keep you by-and-by for your own. And we shall have you with us still. Only a mile off."
"Some ways I'd sooner have been farther off than New Maxham."
"You would? What, you want to see more of the world?"
"No, sir; it ain't that. Though mother did say a while ago that perhaps I'd ought. But I think I'd sooner have begun afresh in a new place. Mother wants to have a cottage here, and me to walk into New Maxham every day. She says she'll feel it more home-like."
"I dare say she will. And the walk is nothing for a hale young fellow like you. Do you good."
"Only, sir, there's Jessie."
"True, there is Jessie. What of her?"
"I shouldn't be right to let Jessie think I'd be free to marry her as soon as we'd thought of—and maybe—"
"Maybe she won't want to wait. Is that it? I don't think commonly that it is the woman who won't wait, do you? Try her, Jack."
"I couldn't leave mother with no one to take care of her. She's been a good mother to me, and I couldn't do it. Not for Jessie's sake even."