"What are you driving at, may I ask?" Cairy demanded coldly.
"What I am going to say isn't usual—it isn't conventional. But I don't know any conventional manner of doing what I want to do. I think we have to drop all that sometimes, and speak out like plain human beings. That's the way I am going to speak to you,—as man to man…. I don't want to beat about the bush, Tom. I think it would be better if you did not come back to-morrow,—never came back to the Farm!"
He had not said it as he meant to phrase it. He was aware that he had lost ground by blurting it out like this. Cairy waited until he had lighted a cigarette before he replied, with a laugh:—
"It is a little—brusque, your idea. May I ask why I am not to come back?"
"You know well enough! … I had hoped we could keep—other names out of this."
"We can't."
"My sister is very unhappy—"
"You think I make your sister unhappy?"
"Yes."
"I prefer to let her be the judge of that," Cairy retorted, walking ahead stiffly and exaggerating his limp.