But he did not.

His education had by this time sufficiently ousted his humanity to keep him quite firm; though his mother might have led an idyllic life with her faithful fruiterer and greengrocer, and nobody have been anything the worse in the world.
Her lameness became more confirmed as time went on, and she seldom or never left the house in the long southern thoroughfare, where she seemed to be pining her heart away.

'Why mayn't I say to Sam that I'll marry him?
Why mayn't I ?' she would murmur plaintively to herself when nobody was near.
Some four years after this date a middle-aged man was standing at the door of the largest fruiterer's shop in Aldbrickham.

He was the proprietor, but to-day, instead of his usual business attire, he wore a neat suit of black; and his window was partly shuttered.

From the railway-station a funeral procession was seen approaching: it passed his door and went out of the town towards the village of Gaymead.