"Yes?" he questioned, after a brief pause.
She did not reply for several seconds; then she went on as if there had been no break. "I don't think I ever thought seriously about anything before I was ill. I took everything as it came, and as most things were good, I just enjoyed myself, and there seemed nothing else in the world but just to enjoy one's self----"
"There's not much enjoyment for most people," he said, seeing she hesitated.
"I don't think enjoyment ought to be the end of life," she replied seriously. Then, suddenly raising her eyes, she said--
"Do you ever get perplexed about the future?"
"I never get anything else," he stammered. "I'm all at sea this very moment."
"You? Tell me about it," she said eagerly.
He shrugged his shoulders, and looked along the road toward the village. Should he tell her? Should he open her eyes to the doings of her own father? Should he point out some of the oppressive conditions under which the poor lived?
For a moment or two there was silence. He felt that her eyes were fixed intently on his face, that she was waiting for him to speak.
"I suppose your father has never told you that we have lost our little farm?" he questioned abruptly, turning his head and looking hard at her at the same time.
"No. How have you lost it? I do not understand."
"Well, it was this way." And he went on to explain the nature of the tenure on which his father leased his farm, but he was careful to avoid any mention of her father's name.
"And you say that in twelve years all the three 'lives' have died?"
"And you have no longer any right to the house you built, nor to the fields you reclaimed from the downs?"
"And the lord of the manor has taken possession?"
"He has let it to another man, who takes possession the day after to-morrow."
"And the lord of the manor puts the rent into his own pocket?"
"And your father has to go out into the world and start afresh?"
"We leave Hillside to-morrow. I'm going to St. Goram now, to see if the little cottage is ready. After to-morrow father starts life afresh, in his old age, having lost everything."
"But wasn't your father very foolish to risk his all on such a chance? Life is always such an uncertain thing."
"I think he was very foolish; and he thinks so now. But at the time he was very hopeful. He thought the cost of bringing the land under cultivation would be much less than it has proved to be. He hoped, too, that the crops would be much heavier. Then, you see, he was born in the parish, and he wanted to end his days in it--in a little home of his own."