"That has turned out very well, Tom. You yourself have said you are glad you didn't have your way in that. And—I don't know—but I fancy fathers (wise fathers, of course) are better judges of what to make of their sons than the sons can be, as to what to make of themselves."
"Yes, yes; that's all right, but about who they are to marry when they grow up? Not but what I might have chosen Blanche for myself, if I had been left to make a choice; but I wasn't, you see."
"But you are engaged to your cousin, you know, Tom, and with your own consent. Isn't it so?"
"Yes; but then I hadn't seen anybody else I ever thought I should care about, or think about," groaned young Tom.
"And this leads us back to where we started from, my dear Tom," said John, kindly. "I think it will be better for you not to stay here over the cricket week, but to return to your home and your Blanche to-morrow. For she is your Blanche, you know."
"I suppose it will be best," sighed Tom, lugubriously.
"And be sure of this, Tom, that what is the right thing to do is the happiest to be done—when it is done. I have fancied how it may have been with you the last few days; and, to tell the truth, I have had a fancy of what might be any time within the last year or two. And so I have striven to keep you and Helen apart; not because I don't love you, Tom, nor because I should not, under other circumstances, have liked you to be Helen's lover, but because you could not be that without dishonour to yourself. But that was only my folly, perhaps; and, anyhow, you are not deeply wounded yet, and there's no harm done yet, either with or without intending it. In a fortnight's time you will have forgotten, or learnt to smile at a few little passages like that of this evening, which I have had my eye and thoughts upon since you have been here. And when the time comes, if you are honest and loyal to yourself, as I feel sure you will be, you will be thankful to me, I think, for having given you a momentary pain, perhaps. And now let us go in to the ladies."
