"Better have it out with her. And yet, perhaps, you'm right. Tell him to his face she'm yours, and tokened to 'e. Stir him up; or, if you find he's that sort, pay him off. Twenty pounds would go an awful long way with a man. 'Tis far easier for such a chap to get a girl to walk with him than put by twenty pounds into the saving's bank."
"A likely idea," said Jarratt. "Such a fellow wouldn't know what love means, same as an educated man like me. I dare say if I was to put it into pounds, shillings, and pence, he'd meet me like a lamb."
Mrs. Weekes almost regretted giving her son advice that looked so promising. Now, she did not wish him to marry Sarah Jane; she did not wish him to marry at all; but since he seemed set upon the step, her desire turned to the schoolmaster's daughter as a woman of character, who would also have three figures for her dowry.
"When all's said, I could wish you would think of Mary."
"Not I," answered her son. "I saw a touch of Mary after that committee meeting at her father's. The place was pretty full of baccy smoke and beer reek, certainly; and she didn't say nothing—not a word—when she looked in at the finish; but there was an expression on her face that made me almost sorry for Churchward after we'd gone, though he is the biggest, emptiest old fool in Lydford."
"A silly, blown-up man! I like to stab his ideas with a word, and let the wind out. But his daughter's not so chuckle-headed. She'd make a tidy wife."
"Not for me. I'll fight yet for Sarah Jane. And any stick's good enough to beat a dog."
Mrs. Weekes, however, hesitated before this sentiment.
"Fight fair, Jar," she said. "Don't let it be told of my son that he didn't go to work honest and above-board. No—no, I never would believe it. Mrs. Swain often says to me that whatever faults I may have—and who hasn't?—yet I speak home to the truth, good market or bad, and never deceive the youngest child as comes with a penny, or the simplest fool who would buy a fowl without feeling it. Be straight. You must be straight, for there's not a crooked drop of blood in your veins. You know all about your mother's family, and as for your father's—rag of a man though he is—I will say of Philip Weekes that he never departs from uprightness by a hair. Often, in my most spirited moments, when I've poured the bitter truth into his ear, like a river, half the night long, your father have agreed to every word, and thanked me for throwing such light on his character."
"I shan't offer the man twenty to begin with," he said. "I may choke him off for less. I ban't angry with him: I'm angry with her for listening to him, or allowing herself to know such trash."