“Nay, Janet, you must remember one thing. When George shall come to this house, he comes, so to say, as its master. He will not, of course, interfere with your arrangements; he will fall in with them readily; but neither will he, nor must he, be under your control. To attempt anything of the sort again would not do.”
Janet knitted on in silence. She had essayed to keep Master George in hand when they first came to the bank to live there: and the result was that he had chosen a separate home, where he could be entirely en garçon.
“Eh me!” sighed Janet. “If young men could but see the folly of their ways—as they see them in after-life!”
“Therefore, Janet, I say that it would be exceedingly inadvisable for you to quit the house,” continued Thomas Godolphin, leaving her remark unnoticed. “It might be, that before you were well out of it, you must return to it.”
“I see the inconvenience also; the uncertainty,” she answered. “But there is no help for it.”
“Yes there is. Janet, I wish you would let me settle it.”
“How would you settle it?”
“By bringing Ethel here. On a visit to you.”
Janet laid down her knitting. “What do you mean? That there should be two mistresses in the house, she and I? No, no, Thomas; the daftest old wife in the parish would tell you that does not do.”
“Not two mistresses. You would be sole mistress, as you are now: I and Ethel your guests. Janet, indeed it would be the better plan. By the spring we should see how Sir George went on. If he improved, then the question could be definitively settled: and either you or I would take up our residence elsewhere. If he does not improve, I fear, Janet, that spring will have seen the end.”