Already she considered in secret what craft might be necessary to bring him to a more reasonable mind.

“You’ll have to think of me as well as yourself,” she said.  “Life’s hard enough without you making it so much harder.  Two things will happen in a few weeks from now and nothing can stop them.  First you’ve got to leave here, because farmer don’t want you any more, and then poor Mister Churchouse is going to pass away.  He’s just fading out like a night-light—­flickering up and down and bound to be called.  And the best man and the truest friend to sorrow that ever trod the earth.”

“I was going from here,” he answered.  “And you can look to me for making a pound a week, and you can have it all if you’ll take nothing from any of my enemies.  If you take money from my enemies, then I won’t help you.”

“You’re a man in your opinions seemingly, though I wish to God you hadn’t grown out of childhood so quick, if you were going to grow to this.  It’ll drive you mad if you’re not careful.  Then where shall I be?”

“I’ll drive other people mad—­not you.  I’ll come back home, and then I’ll find work at Bridport.”

“Where’s home going to be—­that’s the question?” Sabina answered.  “There’s only one choice for you—­between letting him finish your education and going out to work.”

“We’ll live in Bridport, then,” he told her, “and I’ll go into something with machinery.  I’ll soon rise, and I might rise high enough to ruin him yet, some day.  And never you forget he had my offer and turned it down.  He didn’t know what he was doing when he did that.”

“He couldn’t trust you.  How was he to know you wouldn’t try to burn the works again—­and succeed next time?”

Abel laughed.

“That was a fool’s trick.  If they’d gone, he’d only have built ’em again, better.  But there are some things he can’t insure.”

“I know a good few spinners at Bridport.  Shall I have a look round for you?” she asked, as they rose to return.

He considered and agreed.

“Yes, if it’s only through you.  I trust you not to go to him about it.  If you did and I found you had—­”

“No, no.  I’ll not go to him.”

He came and looked again at the motor car that had brought her.  It interested him as keenly as before.

“That’s for him to go about the country in, because he’s standing for Parliament,” explained Sabina.

But his anger was spent.  He heeded her no more, and even the fact that his father owned the car did not modify his deep interest.

He rode a mile or two with her when she started to return and remained silent and rapt for the few minutes of the experience.

His mother tried to use the incident.

“If you was to be good and patient and let the right thing be done, I daresay in a few years you’d rise to having a motor of your own,” she said, when they stopped and he started to trudge back.