“You will give up your profession, but you need not be idle. You must not be, father says. You must look after the plantation, which has been neglected during the dear old lady’s life; you must reclaim the worn-out soil; farm the land on scientific principles, with the aid of chemistry and machinery and things, and improve the stock by importing new what’s-er-names. Oh, you will have plenty to do to keep you from moldering away alive, if you look after your estate as father does after his.
“And neither shall I be idle. I shall look after the house, the servants, the kitchen, the dairy, the poultry yard and the garden, as mother—no—as mother does not look after hers—but, then, I am a plain, country girl, and mamma is a grand duchess, or she ought to be. I must now stop to dance. I can’t keep still any longer. When I have done dancing I will finish this letter.”
The remainder of Odalite’s epistle need not be quoted. It may be guessed.
Every one was perfectly satisfied. No one dreamed of suggesting or even desiring the slightest change in these perfect arrangements.
The spring passed in delightful anticipations.
CHAPTER III
OLD ACQUAINTANCES
But, unhappily, in the height of midsummer, Abel Force, believing that he acted from the purest motives of affection, but—no doubt—as the event proved, deceived and misled by the enemy of mankind, proposed to take all his family for a tour which should include the White Mountains, the Lakes, the St. Lawrence River, the Thousand Islands and Niagara Falls.
Mrs. Force, who had long lost her morbid dread of public resorts, willingly agreed to the proposed journey.