"What is it? If it's anything even half way satisfactory I'll believe you're the wisest man on earth, Jed Winslow."
"Well, if I thought you was liable to believe that I'd tell you to send your believer to the blacksmith's 'cause there was somethin' wrong with it. No, I ain't wise, far from it. But, Charlie, I think you're dead right about what you say concernin' Maud and her father and you. You CAN'T tell her without tellin' him. For your own sake you mustn't tell him without tellin' her. And you shouldn't, as a straight up and down, honorable man keep on workin' for Sam when you ask him, under these circumstances, to give you his daughter. You can't afford to have her say 'yes' because she pities you, nor to have him give in to her because she begs him to. No, you want to be independent, to go to both of 'em and say: 'Here's my story and here am I. You know now what I did and you know, too, what I've been and how I've behaved since I've been with you.' You want to say to Maud: 'Do you care enough for me to marry me in spite of what I've done and where I've been?' And to Sam: 'Providin' your daughter does care for me, I mean to marry her some day or other. And you can't be on his pay roll when you say that, as I see it."
Phillips stopped in his stride.
"You've put it just as it is," he declared emphatically. "There's the situation—what then? For I tell you now, Jed Winslow, I won't give her up until she tells me to."
"Course not, Charlie, course not. But there's one thing more—or two things, rather. There's your sister and Babbie. Suppose you do haul up stakes and quit workin' for Sam at the bank; can they get along without your support? Without the money you earn?"
The young man nodded thoughtfully. "Yes," he replied, "I see no reason why they can't. They did before I came, you know. Ruth has a little money of her own, enough to keep her and Barbara in the way they live here in Orham. She couldn't support me as a loafer, of course, and you can bet I should never let her try, but she could get on quite well without me. . . . Besides, I am not so sure that . . ."
"Eh? What was you goin' to say, Charlie?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing. I have had a feeling, a slight suspicion, recently, that— But never mind that; I have no right to even hint at such a thing. What are you trying to get at, Jed?"
"Get at?"
"Yes. Why did you ask that question about Ruth and Barbara? You don't mean that you see a way out for me, do you?"