"That I'm going to develop them myself, alone."
"N-n-no—not quite that. O, you couldn't! You've no idea what a—why, I couldn't do it with you, without Jeff-Jack's help, nor he without mine! Why, just see what a failure the effort to build this road was, until"—the locomotive bellowed.
"Half-an-hour late, and slowing up again!" exclaimed John. He knew the parson's wife was pressing his mother to spend the night with them, and he was afraid of having his soul asked after. "Why do we stop here, hardly a mile from town?"
"It's to let my folks off. They're going to walk over to the pike while I go on for the carriage and drive out; they and Jeff-Jack and the Hallidays."
The train stopped where a beautiful lane crossed the track between two fenced fields. Fair and Barbara alighted and stood on a flowery bank with the sun glowing in some distant tree-tops behind them. Fannie leaned from the train, took both Jeff-Jack's uplifted hands and fluttered down upon rebounding tiptoes; the bell sounded, the scene changed, and John murmured to himself in heavy agony,
"He's going to ask her! O, Fannie, Fannie, if you'd only refuse to say yes, and give me three years to show what I can do! But he's going to ask her before that sun goes down, and what's she going to say?"
XXVIII.
INFORMATION FOR SALE
"Hope of Suez!" Garnet felt he had spoken just these three words too many. "Overtalked myself again," he said to himself while chatting with others; "a liar always does. But he shall pay for this. Ah me!"