after all?  It seemed so, for at the beginning of November, Jonathan Burge, finding it impossible to replace Adam, had at last made up his mind to offer him a share in the business, without further condition than that he should continue to give his energies to it and renounce all thought of having a separate business of his own.  Son-in-law or no son-in-law, Adam had made himself too necessary to be parted with, and his headwork was so much more important to Burge than his skill in handicraft that his having the management of the woods made little difference in the value of his services; and as to the bargains about the squire’s timber, it would be easy to call in a third person.  Adam saw here an opening into a broadening path of prosperous work such as he had thought of with ambitious longing ever since he was a lad:  he might come to build a bridge, or a town hall, or a factory, for he had always said to himself that Jonathan Burge’s building business was like an acorn, which might be the mother of a great tree.  So he gave his hand to Burge on that bargain, and went home with his mind full of happy visions, in which (my refined reader will perhaps be shocked when I say it) the image of Hetty hovered, and smiled over plans for seasoning timber at a trifling expense, calculations as to the cheapening of bricks per thousand by water-carriage, and a favourite scheme for the strengthening of roofs and walls with a peculiar form of iron girder.  What then?  Adam’s enthusiasm lay in these things; and our love is inwrought in our enthusiasm as electricity is inwrought in the air, exalting its power by a subtle presence.

Adam would be able to take a separate house now, and provide for his mother in the old one; his prospects would justify his marrying very soon, and if Dinah consented to have Seth, their mother would perhaps be more contented to live apart from Adam.  But he told himself that he would not be hasty—­he would not try Hetty’s feeling for him until it had had time to grow strong and firm.  However, tomorrow, after church, he would go to the Hall Farm and tell them the news.  Mr. Poyser, he knew, would like it better than a five-pound note, and he should see if Hetty’s eyes brightened at it.  The months would be short with all he had to fill his mind, and this foolish eagerness which had come over him of late must not hurry him into any premature words.  Yet when he got home and told his mother the good news, and ate his supper, while she sat by almost crying for joy and wanting him to eat twice as much as usual because of this good-luck, he could not help preparing her gently for the coming change by talking of the old house being too small for them all to go on living in it always.

Chapter XXXIV

The Betrothal