"'Tis impossible," I said. "There is my business."
A shriek of laughter came from upstairs. I guessed that Elspeth, knowing I was with guests, had relaxed all repression for the nonce.
"And the child," I added.
"Your reasons are not valid," replied the governor. "For your business, John Allen can well conduct it, and I will give him such supervision as he requires. The child is better in Elspeth's hands than any other's. You will mean nothing to him this next year at least. And Mistress Bnrnet shall keep an eye upon him."
"But there is great danger upon such a journey," I declared shamelessly.
"Why, that is so," admitted Master Burnet. "We may not dodge it. But you had better die, Ormerod, than linger on in the moods you have known this six-month past. You have enough fortune for the rearing of your son and his start in life. Write your will and leave his guardianship to me. You may make your mind easy on that score."
"You seem uncommonly anxious for me to go," I observed a trifle disagreeably.
"I am," he answered promptly. "I will go so far as to urge you in my official capacity, lad. I am not satisfied with affairs. We checkmate the French at one point, or in a certain direction, and they start an intrigue elsewhere. 'Tis an adventurous people, with a genius for military endeavor, that puts us to shame. And to the southward the Spaniards are rearing a power that can be toppled over only by their own fecklessness. We English are hemmed in along the seaboard behind the Allegheny Mountains. We are as cramped as fleas at the end of a dog's tail."
"We have not yet begun to colonize adequately this province alone," I exclaimed.
"True, but we are only the vanguard of the armies of home-makers of the future. Remember that. The time will come when our people will be striving to burst their bounds and move on onto the dim recesses of the Wilderness Country. What is that country? What is there beyond it? Beyond the Sunset, as Tawannears said. That is what I need to know, what England must know."