"Quite so."
"And the girls have always been my friends."
"I think we are all your friends, Twentyman. I'm sure Mary is. But that isn't marrying;—is it?"
"If you would speak to her, Mr. Masters."
"What would you have me say? I couldn't bid my girl to have one man or another. I could only tell her what I think, and that she knows already."
"If you were to say that you wished it! She thinks so much about you."
"I couldn't tell her that I wished it in a manner that would drive her into it. Of course it would be a very good match. But I have only to think of her happiness and I must leave her to judge what will make her happy."
"I should like to have it fixed some way before she starts," said Larry in an altered tone.
"Of course you are your own master, Twentyman. And you have behaved very well."
"This is a kind of thing that a man can't stand," said the young farmer sulkily. "Good night, Mr. Masters." Then he walked off home to Chowton Farm meditating on his own condition and trying to make up his mind to leave the scornful girl and become a free man. But he couldn't do it. He couldn't even quite make up his mind that he would try to do it. There was a bitterness within as he thought of permanent fixed failure which he could not digest. There was a craving in his heart which he did not himself quite understand, but which made him think that the world would be unfit to be lived in if he were to be altogether separated from Mary Masters. He couldn't separate himself from her. It was all very well thinking of it, talking of it, threatening it; but in truth he couldn't do it. There might of course be an emergency in which he must do it. She might declare that she loved some one else and she might marry that other person. In that event he saw no other alternative but,—as he expressed it to himself,—"to run a mucker." Whether the "mucker" should be run against Mary, or against the fortunate lover, or against himself, he did not at present resolve.