Richard Folsom felt he had something of a claim on her friendship, and was importuning them both to come to dinner and go to some entertainment.
"You show the result of your quiet life and freedom from care," Mrs. Folsom said to Miss Holmes. "You're younger looking to-day than when we met on shipboard. I half envy you your easy time, and I occasionally wonder if the money one piles up is worth the hard work and anxiety. Only I had a son to look after and place in the world. He was crazy to go to the gold fields, but I think he saw enough at the Dawsons. It's hard work to keep a boy from going to the bad in a place like this, but Dick has grown up into a pretty nice fellow. Now, if he can only marry a sensible girl, one of the home kind, who isn't all for show and pleasure! I wouldn't mind if she hadn't anything but her wedding clothes. An early marriage steadies a fellow."
But Dick wasn't thinking particularly about marriage. He couldn't have told just why he liked to climb Telegraph Hill an hour or so before sundown and chat a while, bringing some rare fruit, or a new kind of flower, and have a talk and a ramble about. There were girls that were lots more fun, girls who jumped at a chance for a drive behind his fine trotter, Hero, and who didn't even disdain the Sunday drive to the races. Miss Holmes never went to these.
Sometimes of a Sunday they all went over to Oaklands. Mr. Savedra was much interested in the quaint, intelligent man who was not only making a reputation for honesty and fair dealing, but fortune as well. The place was so lovely and restful.
The agricultural resources of the outlying places were beginning to be appreciated. Gardens and farms were found to be largely profitable since people must be fed. Fruit, too, could be improved upon and bring in abundant returns.
After several conversations with Miss Holmes, it was deemed advisable to have an English governess, since French and Spanish were as native tongues to the children. Isola was improving in health, but quite backward for her age, except for her really wonderful gift in music.
"I can't seem to make up my mind to send either of them away," she said to Miss Holmes. "We miss Victor so much. And a mother's joy centres largely in her children. I could not live without them. If I could find some one like you."
"There are some still better adapted to the undertaking than I should be," Miss Holmes returned with a half smile. "I sometimes feel that I have been out of the world of study so long, that I am old-fashioned."
"That is what I like. The modern unquiet flurry and ferment annoys me. And pleasure continually. As if there were no finer graces to life, no composure, nothing but dress and going about. And you have made such a charming child of Miss Laverne. How pretty she grows."
And now she was growing tall rapidly. Miss Holmes wondered occasionally what would happen in a year or two, if, indeed, the idea of travel was a settled purpose. Mr. Chadsey seldom spoke of it, except to the child. He was very much engrossed with his business. But presently she would need different environment. She could not always remain a little girl. And she was pretty with a kind of modest fairness that had an attractive spirituality in it, yet it did not savor of convent breeding. It was the old New England type. She seemed to take so little from her surroundings, she kept so pure to the standard.