He was close to Kate, sitting writing all day long under a roof adjoining the very roof that sheltered her, with herself before his eyes every day. For he could not help but see her as she went out and in. But still it was doubtful whether there was much comfort in those glimpses of her. Mr Crediton had not been unkind to him; but he had never pretended, of course, to be deeply delighted with the unexpected choice which his daughter had made. “If I consent to Kate’s engagement with you,” he had said, “it must be upon my own conditions. It is likely to be a long time before you can marry, and I cannot have a perpetual philandering going on before my eyes. She might like it, perhaps, for that is just one of the points upon which girls have no feeling; but you may depend upon it, it would be very bad for you, and I should not submit to it for a moment. I don’t mean to say that you are not to see her, but it must be only at stipulated times. Thus far, at least, I must have my own way.” John had acquiesced in this arrangement without much resistance. It had seemed to him reasonable, comprehensible. Perpetual philandering certainly would not do. He had to work--to acquire a new trade foreign to all his previous thoughts and education--to put himself in the way of making money and providing for his wife; and he too could see as well as her father that to be following her about everywhere, and interrupting the common business of life by idle love-making, however beatific it might be, was simply impossible. To be able to look forward now and then to the delight of her presence--to make milestones upon his way of the times in which he should be permitted to see her, and sun himself in her eyes,--with that solace by the way, John thought the time would pass as the time passed to Jacob--as one day; and he accordingly assented, almost without reluctance.