“I—I—don’t understand you,” she cried; “your talk is all a puzzle to me.”
“Is it, dear? There, it shall not be long. You know what your uncle said to me the other day?”
“Oh, yes, Luke; but I don’t think he quite meant it.”
“I am sure he did mean it,” he replied; “and he is quite right. For the past year I have been learning lessons of self-denial, and been taught to place the schoolmaster’s duty above questions of a pecuniary kind; but your uncle has placed my position in a practical light, and, Sage, dear, it is as if all the past teaching has been undone.”
“Oh, Luke, Luke,” she cried, “don’t talk like that!”
“I must. I have had another talk with your uncle. This morning I overtook him, and he asked me, as a man, whom he says he can trust, to set aside all love-making, as he called it in his homely Saxon-English, and to treat you only as a friend! ‘Let matters stand for the present, and see what a couple of years bring forth, if you are doing well,’ he said, ‘in your new position.’”
“In your new position, Luke? Why, what do you mean?”
“Sage, dear, I have decided to set aside the idea of being the master of a school.”
“Oh, Luke!”
“And to read for the bar.”