r try at anything you felt you would like to handle.
It would have interested me to look on and see what you were made of,
what you wanted, and how you set about trying to get it. It's a new kind
of deal you have undertaken. It's more romantic than Wall Street, but I
think I do see what you see in it. Even apart from Rosy and the boy,
it would interest me to see what you would do with it. This is your
'flutter.' I like the way you face it. If you were a son instead of
a daughter, I should see I might have confidence in you. I could not
confide to Wall Street what I will tell you--which is that in the midst
of the drive and swirl and tumult of my life here, I like what you see
in the thing, I like your idea of the lord of the land, who should love
the land and the souls born on it, and be the friend and strength of
them and give the best and get it back in fair exchange. There's a
steadiness in the thought of such a life among one's kind which has
attractions for a man who has spent years in a maelstrom, snatching at
what whirls among the eddies of it. Your notes and sketches and summing
up of probable costs did us both credit--I say 'both' because your
business education is the result of our long talks and journeyings
together. You began to train for this when you began going to visit
mines and railroads with me at twelve years old. I leave the whole thing
in your hands, my girl, I leave Rosy in your hands, and in leaving Rosy
to you, you know how I am trusting you with your mother. Your letters to
her tell her only what is good for her. She is beginning to look happier
and younger already, and is looking forward to the day when Rosy and
the boy will come home to visit us, and when we shall go in state to
Stornham Court. God bless her, she is made up of affection and simple
trust, and that makes it easy to keep things from her. She has never
been ill-treated, and she knows I love her, so when I tell her that
things are coming right, she never doubts me.

"While you are rebuilding the place you will rebuild Rosy so that the
sight of her may not be a pain when her mother sees her again, which is
what she is living for."

CHAPTER XXIII

INTRODUCING G. SELDEN

A bird was perched upon a swaying branch of a slim young sapling near
the fence-supported hedge which bounded the park, and Mount Dunstan had
stopped to look at it and listen. A soft shower had fallen, and after
its passing, the sun coming through the light cl