“As for Seth, it’s time he saw something of life besides grubbing here like a farm-hand. We will try and get along without him here. I’ve talked the matter over with a friend of mine, the proprietor of the Tecumseh Chronicle and he is willing to give him a start there, under the most favorable conditions. The salary will be small at first, of course, but I will supplement it with enough to give him a decent living, if he is frugal. After that of course it all depends on himself.”
Seth stood up, as these last words were spoken, and replied, stammeringly. “You needn’t be afraid of my not trying hard, Albert. I’m sure I’m very grateful to you. It’s more than I dared expect you would do for me.” He pushed his way past the women to shake hands with his brother, and say again “It’s so good of you.”
Albert received these expressions of gratitude benevolently, adding some words of advice, and concluding with “You had better get ready to start as early next week as you can. One of the Chronicle men is going on a vacation, and its Workman’s idea that you would be handy in his absence. You could go, say, Wednesday, couldn’t you?”
“So far as getting ready is concerned, I don’t know that there is anything to do which couldn’t be done in a day. But—but—”
“Of course you will need some things. I’ll talk with you about that in the morning. We’ll drive down to Thessaly day after to-morrow together.” Albert rose with this to go out and see Milton, and the family interview was at an end.
Miss Sabrina hurried out to the kitchen, impatient to begin discussing with Alvira, as had been her wont for years, this new development in the affairs of the household.
CHAPTER IX.—AT “M’TILDY’s” BEDSIDE.
Lemuel Fairchild sat still, smoking his wooden pipe, and looking absently, straight ahead, into the papered wall. This habit of gazing at nothing was familiar to them all, and when, at Isabel’s suggestion, the three young people started for a stroll through the orchard path, they left him entirely without ceremony. This was growing to be the rule; no one in the family now consulted him, or took the trouble to be polite to him. He seemed to have become in his own house merely an article of animated furniture, of not much more importance than the rough-furred sickly old cat who dozed his life away back of the stove.