“Promotion!”

“I don’t b’lieve I’d ever get it.  The best I could hope for’d be that they’d leave me here to th’ end o’ my service life.  And besides, if promotion comes tomorrow, I don’t want it.”

“Will, let me say it at once.  Take the money.  I consent.  Whatever you feel’s best for you, that’s what I want.”

He altogether ignored her interruption, and went on in the same tone.  “I used to think it grand, and now it all seems nothing.  I do assure you when I was down there handing out a halfpenny stamp or signing a two-shilling order, I used to feel large enough to burst with satisfaction.  I felt ‘I’m the king o’ the castle.’—­That was thrown in my teeth as how I appeared to others.  Well, now, I feel like a brock in a barrel—­or not so big as him.  Just something small that’s got into the wrong box by accident, and had the lid clapped to on it.  I want room for my elbows, an’ scope for my int’lect.  I must get the sky over my head again, and the open roads under my feet.  If I stopped down there much longer, I should go mad.”

“Then, my dear, you mustn’t stop.”

“These last weeks—­fairly determined to chuck it—­I bin thinking o’ the Colonies as affording advantages to any man who’s got capacities in him; but now this chance comes nearer home, and it lies with you to say if you’ll give me the help required for me to take it.”

“Yes,” said Mavis, earnestly, “and more glad than words can say to think I’m able to do so.”

Indeed she was delighted.  She had been deeply moved by all he told her about his distaste for the work he used to love, and she recognized that he had been magnanimous in refraining from reproaches, but rather implying a purely personal change of ideas as to the cause of disillusionment and depression.  So that, jumping at the opportunity to prove that she counted his inclinations as higher than mere money, she would have accepted any scheme, however unpromising; but in fact the enterprise appeared to her judgment as quite gloriously hopeful.  Every moment increased the charms that it presented; above all, its complete novelty fascinated, and with surprising quickness she found herself thinking almost exactly what her husband had thought in regard to their present existence.  It seemed to her too that she was pining for a larger, freer environment, that this narrow home had become a permanent prison-house, and that she could never really be contented until she got away from it; then she thought of Vine-Pits Farm, the peaceful fields, the lovely woodland, the space, the air, the sunlight that one would enjoy out there; and then in another moment came the fear lest all this should prove too good to be true.

“But, Will, however can Mr. Bates be willing to part with such a splendid business as his for no more than two thousand pounds?”

“Ah, there you show your sense, Mavis.”  As he said this Dale took his hand from his forehead, and resumed his entirely matter-of-fact tone.  “You must understand things aren’t always what they seem.  The business is not what it was.”