“You had something to tell me, John,” said his mother, in a little.
“I thought I had when I came home. Now I am not sure. There is something that we may speak about together, and you will help me to make up my mind one way or the other.”
Mrs Beaton listened in silence as John went on to tell her what he had been doing and thinking for a while. He had not been idle since the building season ended. He had been in the employment of one of the builders of the town. He had been able to make himself useful to him—first by going over and putting to rights the books of the business, which had fallen into confusion, and afterward at more congenial work, where his knowledge of drawing, to which he had given much time when he was a boy, was brought into account with a success which had surprised himself. And now his employer had offered him a permanent place, with an opportunity to acquire the kind of knowledge of his work which would come but slowly to him while he worked only with his hands.
He owned that he liked Mr Swinton, and that they got on well together. Yes, the prospect of success seemed reasonably certain if he were to give himself wholly to the work. And then he came to a pause.
“Yes. It looks like that,” said his mother. She missed the eager hopefulness with which her son was wont to bring forward any new plan or prospect of his, and she thought it wiser to let him go on of his own accord to say his say than to question him. “Do you think well of it, mother? But there is one thing to be said which will please neither you nor me. I doubt in such a case we will need to say farewell to Nethermuir, and take up house in the town.”
“Ay, we should both be sorry for that, but it could be done. You have more to say yet, John?”
“I thought I might have more to say, but since you are content with things as they are, it might be as well to say nothing.”
“Tell me what is in your mind, John. You needna doubt but I’ll take it reasonably, whatever it may be.”
John laughed.
“I have no fears for you, mother. It is for myself and my own discontents that I fear.”