as
far from perfect. She extended a motherly sympathy to the orphaned Don
Caesar. Reserved, like his father, in natural disposition, he was still
more gravely ceremonious from his loss; and, perhaps from the shyness
of an evident partiality for Mamie Mulrady, he rarely availed himself
of her mother's sympathizing hospitality. But he carried out the
intentions of his father by consenting to sell to Mulrady, for a small
sum, the property he had leased. The idea of purchasing had originated
with Mrs. Mulrady.

"It'll be all in the family," had observed that astute lady, "and it's
better for the looks of the things that we shouldn't he his tenants."

It was only a few weeks later that she was startled by hearing her
husband's voice calling her from the hillside as he rapidly approached
the house. Mamie was in her room putting on a new pink cotton gown, in
honor of an expected visit from young Don Caesar, and Mrs. Mulrady was
tidying the house in view of the same event. Something in the tone of
her good man's voice, and the unusual circumstance of his return to the
house before work was done, caused her, however, to drop her dusting
cloth, and run to the kitchen door to meet him. She saw him running
through the rows of cabbages, his face shining with perspiration and
excitement, a light in his eyes which she had not seen for years. She
recalled, without sentiment, that he looked like that when she had
called him--a poor farm hand of her father's--out of the brush heap at
the back of their former home, in Illinois, to learn the consent of her
parents. The recollection was the more embarrassing as he threw his
arms around her, and pressed a resounding kiss upon her sallow cheek.

"Sakes alive! Mulrady!" she said, exorcising the ghost of a blush that
had also been recalled from the past with her housewife's apron, "what
are you doin', and company expected every minit?"

"Malviny, I've struck it; and struck it rich!"

She disengaged herself from his arms, without excitement, and looked at
him with bright but shrewdly observant eyes.

"I've struck it in the well--the regular vein that the boys have been
looking fer. There's a fortin' fer you and Mamie: thousands and tens
of thousands!"

"Wait a minit."

She left him quickly, and went to the foot of the stairs. He could
hear her wonderingly and distinctly. "Ye can take off that new frock,
Mamie," she called out.

There was a sound of undisguised expostulation