“Nowhere to go?” echoes Falkenberg. “When he's lain here the three weeks he's allowed to stay sick by law, he'll go back home again. His father's a farmer.”
Then Falkenberg declares it's like losing part of himself to have me go. If it wasn't for Emma, he'd break his word to the Captain after all.
“Here,” he says, “I'll give you these.”
“What's that?”
“It's the certificates. I shan't want them now, but they may be the saving of you at a pinch. If you ever wanted to tune a piano, say.”
And he hands me the papers and the key.
But, seeing I haven't his ear for music, the things are no use to me; and I tell him so. I could better handle a grindstone than a piano.
Whereat Falkenberg burst out laughing, relieved to find me ready with a jest to the last....
Falkenberg goes out. I have time to laze a little, and lie down all dressed on the bed, resting and thinking. Well, our work was at an end; we should have had to go anyhow. I could not reckon on staying here for all eternity. The only thing outside all calculation was that Falkenberg should stay. If only it had been me they'd offered his work, I'd have worked enough for two! Now, was there any chance of buying him off, I wondered? To tell the truth, I fancied I had noticed something before; as if the Captain were not altogether pleased to have this labourer about the place bearing his own name. Well, perhaps I had been wrong.
I thought and thought. After all, I had been a good workman, as far as I knew, and I had never stolen a moment of the Captain's time for work on my own invention....