"Well, Jennifer, that is what I have come to see you about. Your boys are growing up quite big lads now. What are you going to do with them? What are they—twelve or thirteen years old at least?"
"Just about, sir. I have given them so much head learning as I can. I suppose they must be going out for to do something; but there, 'tis terrible hard for to think about their going away."
"Oh, but I don't think they need go away, Jennifer. I have come to tell you that I have bought that piece of coppice over there. Now, what I have been thinking is this. You and your boys can cut it all down, and make up the faggots with the underwood, and sell it for what it will fetch. That shall go toward the new cottage. And when the land is cleared I will let it to you, and the boys can turn it into potato ground."
Poor Jennifer sat down without a word. She could not take it all in so suddenly and it bewildered her. Clinging to the old ways of her life, and satisfied with the simple round, she shrank from so large a venture, involving so many changes.
"Well, what do you say?" asked her friend, somewhat disappointed that she did not see all the advantages which were so plain to him.
"I don't know what to say, sir. 'Tis very kind of you. But——"
"But what, Jennifer?"
"I was going to say, if you don't mind, I should like one day more in the fields to think it all over. 'Tis a wonderful place for thinking about anything. And nobody but the heavenly Father to talk to."
"Yes, Jennifer, take a day by all means." And he rose to go. "Only remember that you will make out of the coppice more in a month than you can make in the fields in a year; and be your own mistress, too, and come and go as you like."
"In a month!" she said gravely. "Then I am afraid I should be putting my heart in the broken teapot, instead of my money."