“What! Every year does not some lad leave our village, and go and seek his fortune, taking with him but health and strong hands? I have these, and I have more: I have brains and thoughts and hopes, that—again I say, No, no; never fear for me!”
The boy threw back his head proudly; there was something sublime in his young trust in the future.
“Well. But you will write to Mr. Dale or to me? I will get Mr. Dale or the good mounseer (now I know they were not agin me) to read your letters.”
“I will, indeed!”
“And, boy, you have nothing in your pockets. We have paid Dick; these, at least, are my own, after paying the coach fare.” And she would thrust a sovereign and some shillings into Leonard’s waistcoat pocket.
After some resistance, he was forced to consent.
“And there’s a sixpence with a hole in it. Don’t part with that, Lenny; it will bring thee good luck.”
Thus talking, they gained the inn where the three roads met, and from which a coach went direct to the Casino. And here, without entering the inn, they sat on the greensward by the hedgerow, waiting the arrival of the coach—Mrs. Fairfield was much subdued in spirits, and there was evidently on her mind something uneasy,—some struggle with her conscience. She not only upbraided herself for her rash visit, but she kept talking of her dead Mark. And what would he say of her, if he could see her in heaven?
“It was so selfish in me, Lenny.”
“Pooh, pooh! Has not a mother a right to her child?”