"That being so," he said, "that being so, Bill, how would you feel if anybody was to say: 'Here's good money for changing your future career, if you ain't too addicted to Milly Bassett to take it?'"
"Money for her?" asked William.
"Money enough to turn your affections into another quarter and let her go free."
"God's truth, Jo! You've gone and loved her!" shouted William.
"No," answered the carpenter. "By this hand I have not, Bill. I'm not one to love any created woman as be tokened to another man and well you know it. To do so would be a wicked thing. But this I may tell you open and honest: if Milly were a free woman, then I should love her instanter."
"Dammy, Jo! You want to buy her!" said William.
But Jonas shook his head.
"I reverence the woman far, far too much to want any such thing," he said. "You can't buy and sell females in a Christian land; but this I'll say, if you can honestly feel that a good dollop of money would recompense you for losing Milly, things being as they are, then I'm your man. Of course if you feel money's dross before the thought of her, then I shall well understand and we won't touch the subject no more. And, in any case, never a breath must get to her ears else she'd leave my house like a whirlwind, and quite right to do so. But if you feel that you could make shift with another fine woman and might tear yourself away from Milly Bassett for a bit in the bank—if you feel that, William, and only so, then we can go on talking."
William White laughed and ate a bit of pie that hung on his fork. Then he drank from his cider runlet. "What a world!" he said.
Jonas didn't answer and let his great thought sink into the man.