“No, it is not very fine. It means people that are going to settle far away, on the other side of the world. Australia is—I don’t know how many thousand miles away.”
“Can you go there by land?” said Emma. “You needn’t laugh—how was I to know? Oh, I can’t abide going in a ship.”
“That’s a pity, for you can’t go in anything else. But it’s a fine big ship, and every care taken. Look here, Emma, you must make up your mind. Will you go?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” cried Emma; “I can’t tell; how long would you be in the ship? It isn’t what I ever expected,” she said in a plaintive voice. “A hurry, and a fuss, and then a long sea-voyage. Oh, I don’t think I should like it, Mr. Law.”
“The question is, do you like me?” said Law, with a little thrill in his deep yet boyish bass. “You couldn’t like the parting and all that—it wouldn’t be natural; but do you like me well enough to put up with it? I don’t want you to do anything you don’t like, but when I go it will be for good, and you must just make up your mind which you like best—to go with me, though there’s a good deal of trouble, or to stay at home, and good-bye to me for ever.”
At this, Emma began to cry. “Oh, I shouldn’t like to say good-bye for ever,” she said; “I always hated saying good-bye. I don’t know what to do; it would be good-bye to mother, and Ellen, and them all. And never to come back again would be awful! I shouldn’t mind if it was for a year or two years, but never to come back—I don’t know what to do.”
“We might come home on a visit, if we got very rich,” said Law, “or we might have some of the others out to see us.”
“Oh, for a visit!” said Emma. “But they’d miss me dreadful in the workroom. Oh, I wish I knew what to say.”
“You must choose for yourself—you must please yourself,” said Law, a little piqued by the girl’s many doubts; then he softened again. “You know, Emma,” he said, “when a girl gets married it’s very seldom she has her own people near her, and I don’t know that it’s a good thing when she has. People say, at least, husband and wife ought to be enough for each other. And, supposing it was only to London, it would still be away from them.”
“Oh, but it would be different,” cried Emma; “if one could come back now and again, and see them all; but to live always hundreds of thousands of miles away.”