ou no forwarder--quite the contrary. Love
don't keep for ever, more than a leg of mutton will, and sometimes it
comes across me it may go a bit stale, if not actually bad. I fear nought
myself, of course, because Milly's a woman of her word and knows no
changing; but that cuts both ways and, while she's so firm as a rock about
my wages and in a manner of speaking puts money before love, then I
sometimes wonder who could blame me for doing the same. We'm very good
friends, and she'll be a damned fine wife, no doubt--when I get her; but,
meantime, things run a little on the cool side and I can't pretend I feel
so furious set in that quarter as I did three year agone. She ain't the
only pebble on the beach, to say it kindly, though a most amazing wonder
and well worth waiting for in reason. But there's others--not a few very
comely creatures as would reckon me along with three ten a week quite good
enough. I can't hide that from myself."

Well, this was meat and drink to Jonas, but he hid his heart for the
present, though his great excitement made his voice run up till it broke
and he had to begin again--a thing that happened to him sometimes.

"That being so," he said, "that being so, Bill, how would you feel if
anybody was to say: 'Here's good money for changing your future career, if
you ain't too addicted to Milly Bassett to take it?'"

"Money for her?" asked William.

"Money enough to turn your affections into another quarter and let her go
free."

"God's truth, Jo! You've gone and loved her!" shouted William.

"No," answered the carpenter. "By this hand I have not, Bill. I'm not one
to love any created woman as be tokened to another man and well you know
it. To do so would be a wicked thing. But this I may tell you open and
honest: if Milly were a free woman, then I should love her instanter."

"Dammy, Jo! You want to buy her!" said William.

But Jonas shook his head.

"I reverence the woman far, far too much to want any such thing," he said.
"You can't buy and sell females in a Christian land; but this I'll say, if
you can honestly feel that a good dollop of money would recompense you for
losing Milly, things being as they are, then I'm your man. Of course if
you feel money's dross before the thought of her, then I shall well
understand and we won't touch the subject no more. And, in any case, never
a breath must get to her ears else she'd leave my house like a whirlwind,
and quite right to do so. But if yo