"So it is," admitted Christopher, examining it with a laugh. "My eyesight must be failing me. But what good under heaven does his money do Fletcher, after all?"
"Oh, he's saving it up to leave to foreign missions, Tom Spade says. Mr. Carraway is coming down next week to draw up a new will."
"And his grandchildren come in for nothing?"
"It looks that way—but you can't see through Bill Fletcher, so nobody knows. The funny part is that he has taken rather a liking to Mrs. Wyndham, I hear, and she has even persuaded him to raise the wages of his hands. It's a pity she can't patch up a peace with Will—the quarrel seems to distress her very much."
"You have seen her, then?"
"Yesterday, for a minute. She stopped me near the store and asked for news of Will. There was nothing I could tell her except that they dragged along somehow with Sol Peterkin's help. That's a fine woman, Fletcher or no Fletcher."
"Well, she can't help that—it's merely a question of name. There's Cynthia calling us to dinner. We'll have to fill the hogsheads later on."
But when the meal was over and he was returning to his work,
Cynthia followed him with a message from his mother.
"She has asked for you all the morning, Christopher; there's something on her mind, though she seems quite herself and in a very lively humour. It is impossible to get her away from the subject of marriage—she harps on it continually."
He had turned to enter the house at her first words, but now his face clouded, and he hung back before the door.