"I've seemed to have a dragging cold all the last month, but it's going, I think." It was sunny October weather.

He seemed wild with joy, like a schoolboy escaped; then again he was silent and reserved.

He was more gaunt than ever, and there was a haggard look in his eyes.
"You are doing too much," said his mother to him.
He was doing extra work, trying to make some money to marry on, he said.
He only talked to his mother once on the Saturday night; then he was sad and tender about his beloved.
"And yet, you know, mother, for all that, if I died she'd be broken-hearted for two months, and then she'd start to forget me.

You'd see, she'd never come home here to look at my grave, not even once." "Why, William," said his mother, "you're not going to die, so why talk about it ?" "But whether or not--" he replied.
"And she can't help it.

She is like that, and if you choose her--well, you can't grumble," said his mother.
On the Sunday morning, as he was putting his collar on: "Look," he said to his mother, holding up his chin, "what a rash my collar's made under my chin!" Just at the junction of chin and throat was a big red inflammation.
"It ought not to do that," said his mother.