“Then I’ll speak to thee plainly, and without any beating about the bush;—I’m sorry to hear of this, and I wish that it might have been otherwise.”
“Why?”
“I should think that thee might know why, without putting me to the pains of telling thee. We’re a plain folk hereabouts, and the son’s followed in his father’s steps for a hundred and fifty years and more. I suppose that it’s an old-fashioned way that we have, but I like it. I’d rather that my daughter had chosen a man that had been contented with the ways of his father, and one that I had seen grow up under my eye, and that I might know that I could rely upon. I’ve seen little or nothing of thee, since thee ran away to sea, ten or twelve years ago.”
“I don’t see why that should weigh against me.”
“Don’t thee?”
“No. My trade isn’t farming, to be sure, but such as it is, I work steadily at it. I’m sober; I don’t drink, and I trust that I’m no worse than most men of my age.”
“That may all be true; I know nothing of thy habits, but this I do know,—that thee ran away from home once; what surety have I that thee won’t do it again?” Tom made a motion as though to interrupt him, but Elihu held up his hand; “I know! I know!” said he; “thee don’t feel, just now, as though such a thing could happen; but my observation has led me to find that what a man will do once, he may do again. Besides all this, thy trade must unsettle thy life more or less; thee knows the old saying,—‘a rolling stone gathers no moss.’”
“I don’t know why a man should want to stay long enough in one place to get moss-grown,” said Tom.
“That is all very well,” said Elihu Penrose, “but we hereabouts have been content to grow green in the same place that our fathers grew green before us. So, I tell thee plainly, I wish that Patty had chosen some one that I know better than I do thee. Of course, I shan’t bridle her choice, but I wish that it had been Isaac Naylor. I believe that she would have chosen him if thee hadn’t come home amongst us.”
There was a time of silence between them in which both were sunk deeply in thought; then Tom spoke very bitterly: “I see thee don’t like me.”