on the table between
them.

"All right, my girl. Never mind clearing away till I call for you."

He waited until Mary had gone out of the room, and then went on
talking. His face with the lamp-light full upon it looked very firm
and serious, and his manner while he explained all these new ideas was
strangely unemotional. He spoke not in the style of a husband to a
wife, but of a business man proposing a partnership to another man.

"It seems to me, viewing it all round, a wonderful good chance. An
opening that isn't likely to come in one's way twice. Mr. Bates' son
has bin and got himself into such a mess over a horse-racing
transaction that he's had to make a bolt of it. I can't tell you the
facts, because I don't rightly know them; but it's bad--something to
do with checks that'll put him to hidin' for a long day, if he doesn't
want to answer for it in a court o' law. Well, then, the old gentleman
being worn out with private care, wishful to retire, and seeing a
common cheat and waster in the one who ought by nature to succeed
him, has offered me to take over the farm, the trade, an' the whole
bag of tricks."

"But, surely to goodness, Will, you don't think of giving up the post
office?"

"Yes, I do. I think of that, in any case."

"But you love the work."

"Used to, Mavis."

"Don't you now?"

"No. Mavis, it's like this." He had raised a hand to shade his eyes,
as if the lamplight hurt them, and she could no longer see the
expression of his face. But she observed a sudden change in his
manner. He spoke now much in the same confidential tone that he had
always employed in the old time when telling her of his most intimate
affairs--in the happy time when he brought all his little troubles to
her, and flattered her by saying that she never failed to make them
easy to bear. "So far's the P.O. is concerned, all the heart has gone
out of me. The events through which I've passed have altered my view
of the entire affair. Where all seemed leading me on and on, and up
and up, I see nothing before me now."

"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, an