"I am glad John has taken such a liking to the printing office. What a cheerful, ambitious fellow he is."
"A real Yankee!" Father laughed. "I like him very much. It seems a whiff of my native air—of my boyhood's air. Only I hadn't the ambition. The world was not so ambitious. People had an idea in those days that God had put you just where He wanted you to be, and that it was a sin to try to get elsewhere. They didn't read the Bible right in the very beginning, 'Dominion over everything' is his birthright."
After a pause I began in a kind of indifferent tone, "Do you not think it would be a good thing for him to board near the office, where he could run home to his dinner? He is a growing lad, and a cold lunch doesn't seem just the thing. Then in winter there will be storms and awful going."
"We're not in winter now. What is to hinder him from staying until then?"
He looked suddenly, sharply at me. I felt the hot blood rush to my face.
There was a silence. The fresh wind off the lake sang its murmuring song, and the birds gave the chorus, but I could feel the other hush.
"Yes, what's to hinder?" rather impatiently.
"I thought," then my voice faltered.
"Did Dan say anything? He doesn't like the boy's coming, I can see that."
"He felt hurt because he had not known about it. So many things happened just then——"