“Why, to work, my dear little girl. That is getting in arrears shamefully. We are told that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy; but all play and no work would have worse results for Jack than dullness. Ah, Katrine, what a world this might be if we could only do as we like in it!”
“When shall you come again?”
“Perhaps never,” he answered, incautiously.
“Never!” she repeated, her face turning white before she could hide it from him. It was a great shock.
“Katrine, my dear,” he said with some emotion, his tones low and earnest, “I could stay at Caramel Cottage for my whole life and never wish to quit it, unless I carried somebody else away from it with me. But there are things which a poor man, a man without money in the present or prospect of it in the future, may not as much as glance at: he must put the temptation from him and hold it at arm’s length. I had a dream the other night,” he added, after a pause: “I thought I was a Q.C. and stood in my silk, haranguing a full bench of judges at Westminster—who listened to me with attentive suavity. When I awoke I burst out laughing.”
“At the contrast it presented to reality?” she breathed.
“Just at that. If I were only making enough to set up a snug little nest of a home, though ever so small, it would be—something: but I am not. And so, Katrine, you see that many things I would do I cannot do; cannot even think of. And there it lies, and there it ends.”
“Yes, I see, Edgar,” she answered, softly sighing.
“Shall you miss me when I am gone?”