"I'm not so sure I mind now. It's for your sake, Mary Ann, believe me, my dear." He took her bare hand kindly and felt it burning. "You're a very simple, foolish little thing, yes, you are. Don't cry. There's no harm in being simple. Why, you told me yourself how silly you were once when you brought your dying mother cakes and flowers to take to your dead little sister. Well, you're just as foolish and childish now, Mary Ann, though you don't know it any more than you did then. After all you're only nineteen—I found it out from the vicar's letter. But a time will come—yes, I'll warrant in only a few months' time you'll see how wise I am and how sensible you have been to be guided by me. I never wished you any harm, Mary Ann, believe me, my dear, I never did. And I hope, I do hope so much that this money will make you happy. So you see you mustn't go away with me now—you don't want everybody to talk of you as they did of your brother Tom, do you, dear? Think what the vicar would say."
But Mary Ann had broken down under the touch of his hand and the gentleness of his tones.
"I was a dead leaf so long, I don't care!" she sobbed passionately. "Nobody never bothered to call me wicked then. Why should I bother now?"
Beneath the mingled emotions her words caused him was a sense of surprise at her recollection of his metaphor.
"Hush! You're a silly little child," he repeated sternly. "Hush! or Mrs. Leadbatter will hear you." He went to the door and closed it tightly. "Listen, Mary Ann! Let me tell you once for all that even if you were fool enough to be willing to go with me, I wouldn't take you with me. It would be doing you a terrible wrong."
She interrupted him quietly.
"Why more now than before?"
He dropped her hand as if stung, and turned away. He knew he could not answer that to his own satisfaction, much less to hers.
"You're a silly little baby," he repeated resentfully. "I think you had better go down now. Missus will be wondering."
Mary Ann's sobs grew more spasmodic. "You are going away without me," she cried hysterically.