“Then, look here, my boy. What is your salary to be, if you get Lawford School; I say, if you get it?”
“Seventy pounds per annum, sir, with a house, and an addition for my certificate, if I have been fortunate enough to win one.”
“Seventy pounds a year, with a house, if you get the school, and some more if you win a certificate, my lad; so that all your income is depending upon ifs.”
“I am sure of the school, sir,” said Luke, warmly, as he coloured up.
“Are you, my lad? I’m not,” said the Churchwarden, drily. “No, Luke Ross, I like you, for I believe you to be a clever scholar, and—what to my mind’s ten thousand times better than scholarship—I know you to be a true, good-hearted lad.”
“I thank you, sir,” said Luke, whose heart was sinking; and Portlock went on—
“I’m not a poor man, Luke, and every penny I have I made with my own hand and brain. Sage is as good as my child, and when we old folks go to sleep I dare say she and her sister will have a nice bit o’ money for themselves.”
“I never thought of such a thing as money, sir,” cried Luke, hotly.
“I don’t believe you ever did, my boy,” said the Churchwarden. “But now listen. Sage is very young yet, and hardly knows her own mind. I tell you—there, there, let me speak. I know she thinks she loves you. I tell you, I say, that I’d sooner see Sage your wife than that of any man I know; but I’m not going to keep you both, and make you sacrifice your independence, and I’m not going to have my child goto a life of drudgery and poverty.”
“But you forget, sir, we should be both having incomes from our schools.”