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250 that night. He remembered it as he was eating his dinner, and as the nearest way to the chapel was by Steve's cottage, he thought he would go. Perhaps he might meet Sarah. She might be at the door. He might even feel it possible to call there. He had given Steve a kind of promise which inferred some oversight of Joyce and his children, and if Joyce were sick, it would not look remarkable for him to call and ask after her. He made these sort of excuses for a few minutes as he sat smoking after dinner, then suddenly the whole expression of his face changed. He put down his pipe with unusual decision, and as he walked rapidly up-stairs he said bluntly to himself, "I'd be an honest man if I was thee, Jonathan Burley. Go and see Sarah Benson. Thou needs no apologies. She needs none. What is ta framing excuses that are half lies for?"

He put on his best broadcloth suit, and in all other respects dressed with unusual care. And it was not altogether vanity which made him look with complaisance on his reflection in the glass, and say, "I'm a bit bald and a bit stout, and t' last four years hes made me a bit gray, but I'm a handsome man, as men go yet, I think." Nor