ple; and Dane has imported them. He receives the employes
of the mills,' said Prudentia, chuckling,--'whoever will come
and pay a penny; his own workmen and the others. The levee is
held on Saturday nights; and Dane lays himself out to amuse
them with reading to them and singing. Fancy it! Fancy Dane
reading all sorts of things to those audiences! and the
evenings are so interesting, I am told, that they do not
disperse till eleven o'clock. I believe he has it in
contemplation to add the more material refreshment of
sandwiches and coffee as soon as he gets his arrangements
perfected. And he is going to build, as soon as the spring
opens, O, I don't know what!'
'Fools build houses, and other people live in them,' said Mr.
Falkirk.
'O, it's not houses to live in--though I have a notion he is
going to do that too. He lives with old Gyda pretty much of
the time.'
'Well,' said Dr. Arthur, looking at Mr. Falkirk but speaking
to Wych Hazel, 'I need only add, that my father thoroughly
approves of all Rollo's work.'
'Work?--does he call it "work"?' said Wych Hazel, looking up.
'It is not exactly play, Miss Kennedy!'--
But the soft laugh that answered that, no one could define.
'He won't find it play by the by,' said Mr. Falkirk.
CHAPTER XLI.
A LESSON.
This visit and talk gave Hazel a great deal to ponder. The
work, and--the doer of it; and--did he ever think of her, she
questioned, in the doing? And did he expect to make _her_
'stand, as he had the bay'? and come, if he but 'snapped his
fingers'? On the whole, Miss Wych did not feel as if _she_ were
developing any hidden stores of docility at present!--not at
present; and one or two new questions, or old ones in a new
shape, began to fill her mind; inserting themselves between
the leaves of her Schiller, peeping cunningly out from behind
'reason' and 'instinct' and 'the wings of birds'; dancing and
glimmering and hiding in the firelight. Mr. Falkirk might have
noticed, about this time, that Miss Wych was never ready to
have the gas lit.
The gas was lit, however, and the tea-tray just brought in,
when one evening a few nights after the visit last recorded,
Rollo himself was announced. Notwithstanding all Mrs. Coles
had prognosticated, he seemed very much like himself both in
face and manner; he came in and talked and took his place at
the table, just as he had been used to do at Chickaree. Not
even more grave than he had often been there.
It w
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