“So you are going to leave us by the eight o’clock train to-morrow, are you?” asked Jane, when he went to Pincote to say a few last words of farewell. He had sat down by her side on the sofa, and had taken her unresisting hand in his; a somewhat thin, cold little hand, that returned his pressure very faintly. How different, as he could not help saying to himself, from the warm, plump fingers of Matilda Moggs. “Yes, I’m going by the morning train. Perhaps I shall never come back. Perhaps I shall be drowned,” he said, somewhat dolorously. “Not you, Edward, dear. You will live to plague us all for many a year to come. I wish I could do your business, and go instead of you.” “You don’t mean to say that you would like to cross the Atlantic, Jane?” “I mean to say that there are few things in the world would please me better. What a fresh and glorious experience it must be to one who has never been far from home!” “But think of the sea-sickness.” “Think of being out of sight of commonplace land for days and days together. Think how delightful it must be to be rocked on the great Atlantic rollers, and what a new and pleasant sensation it must be to know that there is only a plank between yourself and the fishes, and yet not to feel the least bit afraid.” Edward shuddered. “When you wake up in the middle of the night, and hear the wind blowing hard, you will think of me, won’t you?” he said. “Of course I shall. And I shall wish I were by your side to enjoy it. To be out in a gale on the Atlantic—that must indeed be glorious!” Edward’s fat cheeks became a shade paler, “Don’t talk in that way, Jane,” he said. “One never can tell what may happen. I shall write to you, of course, and all that; and you won’t forget me while I’m away, will you?” “No, I shall not forget you, Edward; of that you may be quite sure.” Then he drew her towards him, and kissed her; and then, after a few more words, he went away. It was just the sort of parting that his father would have approved of, he said to himself, as he drove down the avenue. No tears, no sentimental nonsense, no fuss of any kind. Privately he felt somewhat aggrieved that she had not taken the parting more to heart. “There wasn’t even a single tear in her eye,” he said to himself. “She doesn’t half know how to appreciate a fellow.”