‘Did she tell you what she wished to speak to me about?’
‘Why, no, she hasn’t. Was there—anything particular?’
‘She feels the time very heavy on her hands. It seems you don’t like the thought of her looking for employment?’
John rose from his chair and grasped the back of it.
‘You ain’t a-goin’ to encourage her to leave us? It ain’t that you was talkin’ about, Sidney?’
‘Leave you? Why, where should she go?’
‘No, no; it’s all right; so long as you wasn’t thinkin’ of her goin’ away again. See, Sidney, I ain’t got nothing to say against it, if she can find some kind of job for home. I know as the time must hang heavy. There she sit, poor thing! from mornin’ to night, an’ can’t get her thoughts away from herself. It’s easy enough to understand, ain’t it? I took a book home for her the other day, but she didn’t seem to care about it. There she sit, with her poor face on her hands, thinkin’ and thinkin’. It breaks my heart to see her. I’d rather she had some work, but she mustn’t go away from home for it.’
Sidney took a few steps in silence.
‘You don’t misunderstand me,’ resumed the other, with suddenness. ‘You don’t think as I won’t trust her away from me. If she went, it ‘ud be because she thinks herself a burden—as if I wouldn’t gladly live on a crust for my day’s food an’ spare her goin’ among strangers! You can think yourself what it ‘ud be to her, Sidney. No, no, it mustn’t be nothing o’ that kind. But I can’t bear to see her livin’ as she does; it’s no life at all. I sit with her when I get back home at night, an’ I’m glad to say she seems to find it a pleasure to have me by her; but it’s the only bit o’ pleasure she gets, an’ there’s all the hours whilst I’m away. You see she don’t take much to Mrs. Eagles; that ain’t her sort of friend. Not as she’s got any pride left about her, poor girl don’t think that. I tell you, Sidney, she’s a dear good girl to her old father. If I could only see her a bit happier, I’d never grumble again as long as I lived, I wouldn’t!’
Is there such a thing in this world as speech that has but one simple interpretation, one for him who utters it and for him who hears? Honester words were never spoken than these in which Hewett strove to represent Clara in a favourable light, and to show the pitifulness of her situation; yet he himself was conscious that they implied a second meaning, and Sidney was driven restlessly about the room by his perception of the same lurking motive in their pathos. John felt half-ashamed of himself when he ceased; it was a new thing for him to be practising subtleties with a view to his own ends. But had he said a word more than the truth?