‘To work what out--to go away when you might stay a week longer? Aunt Mary is not everybody. I will speak to my father,’ cried Elly, in the light of a new impulse. It was not at all a usual thing for anyone to think of going directly to the rector, but yet in a great emergency it might be done. ‘No,’ said John. ‘Now that Mrs. Egerton knows, and all of them, it’s honest, Elly; that’s all I want. Don’t let us ask anything more. They shall never say I bound you to a nobody when you might have done so much better. You’re free, Elly; but you’ll stick to me all the same I know.’ ‘Till I die--and after,’ she said, raising her face, which was a little pale, but ennobled with great and solemn feeling. She added after a moment, falling back to a more natural level, ‘But I can’t understand, all the same, why you should hurry off like this--why, for something that Percy said, Percy! you should change all in a moment and go and leave _me_.’ ‘I’m going after you,’ said John. ‘You’re perhaps a long way off, Elly, but the road’s clear, and I shall be a little bit nearer to you every step I take. I’ll be a little bit nearer every day, please God. I’ve got the ball at my feet, Elly. I’ve never had time to tell you about it, to show you. There’s all the plans and calculations made out. Perhaps it needn’t be so very long. I am not going to lose a day, not a day.’ ‘What is it, Jack? Something like what we used to talk of? oh, how silly we were! about the lighthouse----?’ ‘It’s not a lighthouse, but the biggest job--Elly, it was you who put me up to it from the very first. It’s your work as well as mine, and it’s for you. And I’ve got the ball at my feet and the road’s clear.’ CHAPTER XVI. SUSIE’S SHARE. Susie had never been so much made of, so watched over and attended to, all her life.