ill I would not think of doing
it if it makes you unhappy. Although you did tell Mrs. Godstone that you
consented, I will go off at once and tell them that I have changed my
mind, and that on thinking it over I have concluded to stay here with
you."

"No, no, Jack," his mother said, as he turned to carry his offer into
effect. "It is not that at all. I am quite willing that you should go,
my boy. Of course I shall miss you; but other women have to see their
sons go to sea or abroad, and I shall be no worse off than they are. I
am very pleased, indeed, that you should have the life you wish for open
to you. There is now a far better prospect of your getting on and doing
well than there was when your father consented that you should go to sea
some day. I am not crying about that at all, Jack, but from pleasure,
with perhaps a little pain in it, at the kind offer Mrs. Godstone has
just made me with regard to Lily and myself."

And she then told Jack the proposal that had been made to her.

"And are you going to accept it, mother? Oh, I do hope you will. I have
never cared for myself, but I have sometimes been so sorry when I
thought that Lily would grow up so different from what my father would
have wished her."

"And so have I, Jack. Boys are boys, and can to some extent make
themselves what they like. Poor men's sons can, if they are steady and
industrious and clever, rise in the world; rich men's sons can come down
to beggary. But it is different with girls. And it always has been a
great grief to me too when I have thought of Lily's future. For myself,
I do not like taking the money--that you can well believe,--but for her
sake I should be very wrong to refuse the offer. I shall be sorry to
leave Leigh; and yet, you see, after living for thirteen years such a
different life, I do not see things as I did when I was a girl, and
have blamed myself often because I have felt the difference. But I have
felt it, and therefore the idea of going back to Dulwich again is not so
painful to me as I think it ought to be."

"Of course it is quite natural, mother," Jack said; "and it would be
curious if you did not feel so after living there so long and mixing
with people so different in their ways. And won't it be splendid having
a nice little home like that to come back to, and Lily being educated as
a lady, and I making my way on. It will be grand, mother!"

"I shall have a talk with my father and Ben," Mrs. Robson said. "My