"To say I would ever leave you, Charlie, while you are so helpless, would be to tell a lie, for I could not do it. Mr. —— is a civil engineer. He is always travelling about. I should have no settled home to take you to. How can you suppose I would abandon you? Do you think I could find any happiness after doing it? Let us be silent about this."
"I will not, Kate. I am sure, that, besides being a selfish, it would be a foolish thing to submit to you in this matter. I shall linger, perhaps, until your youth is gone, and then have the pang, far worse than any other I could suffer, of leaving you quite alone in the world. Do listen to reason!"
She sat thinking. At last she said, "Well, wait one year."
"That would be nonsensical procrastination. Does not the doctor declare that a year will not better my condition?"
"But he cannot be sure. And I promise you, Charlie, that, if Mr. —— asks me then, I will think about it,—and if you are better, go with him. More I will not promise."
"A year from last February, you mean?"—A pause.
"Encroacher! Yes, then."
"And you will write to him to say so?"
"Indeed! That would be pretty behavior!"
"But as you rejected him decidedly, he may form new"——She clapped her hand upon my mouth.