Not Just the Girl

(Peeling Potatoes, Ernest Walbourn)

"You say you love her. . . . And what does that mean exactly?"

"Means I don't want to leave her."

"It's not just the girl you have to want, Fisher Bloom; it's the life you'll have with her, the home, the children. It's all too easy to make someone else pay when all the art, the beauty is gone from your craft and it's just about putting food on the table. It can make a man more cruel than he thought he had it in him to be. Not wanting to leave -- it's not the same as wanting to stay. If there's any doubt now, go. Break her heart now."

"No."

"Better that than stay and break her spirit over years."

This, by far, is one of my favorite conversations in Larkrise to Candleford.