"I'm properly certain mother would say I ought to have it," he declared.
"I expect she would, and her word's my law. You'll be of age in less than a year, so things may happen as you would wish. But I don't transfer till the present lease has run out. It wouldn't do for you to own the farm on which you're being taught your business."
"I know my business. I know full as much as Bob Elvin, if not more. I've got larger ideas than him."
"I dare say you have; and now you'd best be gone. And you can see me again when you've heard your mother."
John Henry departed and Jacob considered him. In the past he had much resented similar applications on smaller subjects: the young man never lost anything for the sake of asking; but now this large request left him unmoved. He meant to leave Bullstone to his son, and had no real objection to handing it over in his own lifetime. For the moment this incident offered hopes of a message from his wife. There might chance some thread in John Henry's demands to serve for the business of drawing Margery and himself together again. He was ever on the look-out for such threads.
CHAPTER IX
JACOB COMES HOME
The mother of Margery believed, with Augustin, that persecution is the only solicitude the virtuous have any right to show a sinner. She held that where the least doubt of salvation might still be said to lie, it was better to torment than ignore, since this form of attention will sometimes torture the wrong-doer into grief for his wickedness, and so open the door to repentance and salvation. But she was not often in such doubt and generally separated the goats from the potential sheep without difficulty. The doomed she did not ever persecute, since any attention paid to those patently condemned was not only useless to them, but implied danger to the agent.
Of such, without the pale, was Jacob Bullstone, and now a situation had been reached where one thing must certainly have happened, save for the attitude of Judith Huxam towards him. Even despite her it might yet occur and the issue still stood in hope; but success implied that Margery would first actively oppose her mother, and her power to do so lessened fast.
The double accident of Jacob's broken thigh and his wife's indisposition delayed a possible union, and now the next step to any such event depended upon Margery. By letting her husband know that she desired to return, she might have shifted the responsibility on to his shoulders, and so ensured the achievement; but she was still anxious that he should not know, since she feared the violent steps that he might take to bring them together. Moreover she desired to be able to say afterwards to her parents that she went of her own free will back to Red House, and that her husband had no hand in the action.