'I cannot remain here,' he said. 'I have no stomach for ale; moreover, Captain Ford expects me at Beer.'
'Well, go along with you, boy, and may you soon sicken of sawing stone and take to cutting the waves.'
Beer village or hamlet was to be reached by one or two ways. There was the road, which was the shortest, that ran along a dip in the land, between green hedges; and there was the way by the White Cliff, that was pleasantest but longest. Jack chose the latter, solely because it was unfrequented, and in his then mood he was indisposed for conversation.
What ailed him?
He had at length obtained that for which he had been in search, and for which he had chafed: work, and work eminently suitable, work, moreover, sufficiently well paid to support him. He was entering the service of a master who, if he possessed a tithe of his sister's good qualities, would be to him a friend and a father. He had accordingly every reason to be elated. On the contrary he was depressed.
What ailed him?
Undoubtedly he felt his loneliness, yet he was not so lonely as he had been, for Mrs. Jose had been a good friend to him, and had enlisted for him the sympathies of her brother. There is such a sensation in a young breast as home-sickness without a home for which to be sick; it is a vague yearning and regret after something unknown, undefined.
The young spirit is like young wheat—it grows weak, watery, yellow, there has been overmuch rain, overmuch cold. All it needs is the sun.
That which burrowed in his heart like a mole was the thought of Winefred's treatment of him. He could understand that there was occasion for it. On his account she and her mother had suffered great annoyance, had undergone wounding suspicion. They had been sent to Coventry by the neighbourhood. Winefred was sensitive to the slights she had encountered, and held him to have been prime mover in the combination against her mother and herself. It was natural that she should regard him with resentment, and yet, that she should do so, knowing as he did that he had personally done nothing to stir up the hostile feeling against her and her mother, distressed him greatly.
Now that Winefred had departed he ought to have felt relieved. There was no further chance of an encounter in which he always came off worsted. Yet he was not so.