"I reckon you are in the same mind about leaving me, Joe," resumed the aged woman, trembling with extreme feeling, and uttering the sentence with a cadence that sounded like the key-note of desolation;—"but I wish you to say what you are intending to do when I give you your indentures, to-morrow at noon."
"My kind mother,—for a true mother you have been to me," replied the youth, forcibly subduing his feelings, and addressing Dame Deborah with a degree of animation and a fervency of look she had seldom witnessed in him,—"it is high time I became acquainted with the world. Believe me,—I do not desire to leave you through ingratitude for your unremitted kindness to a poor orphan,—but I feel I am fitted for other scenes than these. More than all, man is the great book I wish to read; and the few humble pages of his history which lie around me here I have turned over, till I am weary of the writing. I shall be useless to you if I remain, for I shall never be content, or at rest. I go from you, for a season; but never, never, dear mother, shall I cease to think of you!"
Joe bowed his head, and covered his face with his hands, in deep emotion; and the dame, moved utterly beyond self-possession, arose with trembling haste, and clasping her foster-child in her aged arms, kissed his fair forehead, while the unwonted tears trickled down her furrowed cheeks.
"My dear bairn! my pratty bairn! my noble bairn!" exclaimed she with a bounding heart, as she stood over him in affectionate admiration.
Joe wept, in spite of his efforts to master tears,—but, at length, recovered sufficient self-possession to lead his aged protectress back to her chair, and to recommence the conversation.
"You will consent, then, I hope, to let me go, kind mother," he said, still holding her hand.
"The Lord's will be done, bairn!" replied Deborah, in a tone of calm and natural piety. "Yes," added she, with resumed cheerfulness, and in her customary firm under-tone,—"thou shal' go, Joey, lad! and thy pocket shall not be empty, nayther!"
"Nay, dear mother," answered the high-minded lad,—"I have already burdened you too heavily, and I will never consent to rob you of the refuge of your old age:—remember, I have hands and health, and can work for my own support."
"God forbid thou should'st be idle!" answered the dame;—"for idleness leads to sin and crime, while honest labour needs never be ashamed. But a few guineas in thy pocket will do thee no harm, an' thou husbands 'em well. More than that, 'There's no knowing what a man may have to meet when he leaves home,' thou know'st is an old saying, and thou'lt find it so apt, that thou'lt think on't when thou has left me, mayhap."
A calm and provident conversation ensued, during which Joe agreed to accept a purse of twenty spade-aces from the good old dame, after she had assured him it would by no means straiten her means either of subsistence or plenty.