“Shall we walk to Nottinghill?” asked Phil. “It’s a longish tramp for you, May, but that’s the very thing you want.”
May agreed that it was a desirable thing in every point of view, and George Aspel did not object.
As they walked along, the latter began to wonder whether a new experiment had been made lately in the way of paving the streets with india-rubber. As for May, she returned such ridiculous answers to the simplest questions, that Phil became almost anxious about her, and finally settled it in his own mind that her labours in the telegraph department of the General Post-Office must be brought to a close as soon as possible.
“You see, mother,” he said that night, after Aspel had left the cottage and May had gone to her room, “it will never do to let her kill herself over the telegraph instrument. She’s too delicately formed for such work. We must find something better suited to her.”
“Yes, Phil, we must find something better suited to her.—Good-night,” replied Mrs Maylands.
There was a twinkle in the widow’s eye as she said this that sorely puzzled Phil, and kept him in confused meditation that night, until the confusion became worse confounded and he fell into an untroubled slumber.