"Have you any opinion about the best means to be used in the future?"
"He must leave London and come to Hatton where he can be under your constant care. Will you accept this charge? I do not mind telling you that it is your duty. These looms and spindles any clever spinner can direct right, but it takes a soul to save a soul. You know that."
"I will be in London tonight, Mr. Lugur. You are a friend worth having. I thank you."
"Good-bye! I leave for Cardiff at once. I leave Harry with God and you—and I would not be hard with Harry."
"I shall not. I love Harry."
"You cannot help loving him. He is doing wrong, but you cannot stop loving him, and you
know it was while as yet we were sinners, God loved and saved us. Good-bye, sir!"
The door closed and John turned the key and sat down for a few minutes to consider his position. This sorrow on the top of his disagreement with Jane and his anxiety about the threatened war in America called forth all his latent strength. He told himself that he must now put personal feelings aside and give his attention first of all to Harry's case, it being evidently the most urgent of the duties before him. Jane if left for a few days would no doubt be more reasonable. Greenwood could be safely left to look after Hatton mill and to buy for it all the cotton he could lay his hands on. He had not the time to visit his mother, but he wrote her a few words of explanation and as he knew Jane's parlors were full of women, he sent her the following note:
MY DEARLY LOVED WIFE,
Instant and important business takes me at a moment's notice to London. I have no time to come and see you, and solace my heart with a parting glance of your beauty, to hear your whispered good-bye, or taste the living sweetness of your kiss, but you will be constantly present with me. Waking, I shall be loving and thinking of you; sleeping I shall be dreaming of you. Dearest of all sweet, fair women, do not forget me. Let me throb with your heart and live in your constant memory. I will write you every day, and you will make all my work easy and all my hours happy if you send me a few kind words to the Charing Cross