“I ain’t fit to own to love for anybody now, sir! and it would break her heart to know what I’ve been up to all these years.”
“Where does she live?”
“At Farnham, in this county, sir.”
“Here in England! Why, that is only twenty-five or thirty miles from here!” exclaimed Earle, in surprise.
“Yes, sir; and if I had made a good haul here, I was going down to see her, and settle something handsome on her,” he frankly confessed, but his face flushed, nevertheless, at the acknowledgment.
“Wouldn’t you like to see her now?” asked Earle.
“That I would, sir; and I suppose the poor old lady has been worrying and wondering what’s happened to me, that I did not send my usual letter and money.”
“Did you send her money regularly?”
Earle began to think there was a little green spot in the man’s heart after all, and there might be some hope of reclaiming him even yet.
“Once in three months—sometimes more, sometimes less, as my luck was, but always something as often as that, though it’s six months now since she’s heard a word from me, poor old lady,” he said, with a sigh.