“I think it is very much to your credit, Jo,” I said, “that you are able to run alone already.”
“O, it is nothing,” he answered, though I could see he was proud of it. “All I have to do is to look around, and see that the belts are on and that the machinery is running smoothly. The mill runs itself, and if anything should go wrong, I have only to shut down the gate, and call Barker. But nothing is likely to go wrong. Barker is a fine miller, and he has everything so arranged that the water does the work with little assistance. But tell me how much you have missed me again, and everything that has occurred at home since I came away.”
Under the first head I could have talked all night, but there was nothing new except the arrival of Bragg.
“He was here to-day,” Jo said, thoughtfully, “and I don’t like his looks. He came in while I was alone, and inquired if this was Barker’s mill. I answered that it was, when he said he presumed my name was Jo Erring. On my confessing my name, he sat down on a pile of sacks, and watched me intently for half an hour, when he got up, and went out without saying a word. I suppose he went up to the house, and looked at Barker in the same way, for I saw him come out of the door, mount his horse, and ride away. He looks like one of the Devil’s sons. Who is he?”
I told all I knew about him, and I thought Jo was much interested in the statement that he had been raised at Mateel’s old home, and that they had grown up together.
“He’s impudent, whoever he is; I can say that for him. I thought he wanted to buy me, he looked at me so closely. I suppose Mateel is as pretty as ever.”
I answered that she wonderfully improved on acquaintance, and that, having gone down into the bottom of her trunk, she was better dressed than ever when last I saw her.
“You know that letter of apology to Mateel I read you?” Jo inquired, without paying much attention to my remark.
I said I remembered it very distinctly, but I wondered why he now regarded it so pleasantly, for he was smiling.
“Well, I received an answer to it a day or two after coming here, accompanied by an invitation to visit her, and I don’t mind confessing to you that I went, as I had learned a great deal since I called there the first time with your mother, and was anxious she should know it. In fact, I have been there three times in three weeks. It’s only a short distance to their house from here, and Barker gave me so many lessons in bowing and politeness that I couldn’t resist the temptation to try them.”