"Oh! yes you do! If you're a man, you must. You'll learn a lot of new things—you'll keep straight, because you'll have plenty to do. Why, it will 'hatch you over again, and hatch, you different,' as somebody said. You'll see."
He looked at her, trying hard to catch her expression in the dusk.
"And if I do come back different, perhaps—perhaps—soom day you'll not be ashamed to be seen wi' me? Look here, Miss Laura. From the first time I set eyes on you—from that day you came up—that Sunday—I haven't been able to settle to a thing. I felt, right enough, I wasn't fit to speak to you. And yet I'm your—well, your kith and kin, doan't you see? There can't be no such tremendous gap atween us as all that. If I can just manage myself a bit, and find the work that suits me, and get away from these fellows here, and this beastly farm——"
"Ah!—have you been quarrelling with Daffady all day?"
She looked for him to fly out. But he only stared, and then turned away.
"O Lord! what's the good of talking?" he said, with an accent that startled her.
She rose from her seat.
"Are you sorry I came to talk to you? You didn't deserve it—did you?"
Her voice was the pearliest, most musical, and yet most distant of things. He rose, too—held by it.
"And now you must just go and make a man of yourself. That's what you have to do—you see? I wish papa was alive. He'd tell you how—I can't. But if you forget your music, it'll be a sin—and if you send me your song to write out for you, I'll do it. And tell Polly I'll come and see her again some day. Now good-night! They'll be locking up if I don't hurry home."