‘Maybe two—maybe three.’
‘O no; there is no probability of that.’
‘There’s no saying. But what I want to be at now—and mind you, I’m not doubting you, and I’m not like to doubt Madge—what I want to be at is that while you are away in foreign parts you may change your mind—hold hard a minute—Madge may change hers. Heaps of things may happen. So that all I meant by what I said to her the other night is that you should both be welcome to change if you think it best for yourselves. So there are to be no bindings and pledges atween you. If you come back and are of the same mind and she is content, I will not be against you. Is it a bargain? It is a fair one, though you mayn’t think it now; but you are not the lad I take you for if you don’t own it to be common-sense and agree to it.’
‘I cannot see anything in it to disturb us,’ said Philip, ‘since you leave us free to please ourselves.’
‘Ay, but you understand that when I say free, I mean it. If you are going back to the house, you can tell Madge everything I’ve said.’
‘We could not desire any other arrangement. I am content, and she will be. Whatever your tiff with my father may be about, it will not bother us.’
‘Ah, you had better wait till you hear what he has to say,’ observed the yeoman, with a droll shadow of a grin, as if he again recalled that joke which amused but did not please him.