"We can, Matilda. And I want that Sandy should get his fill of paintings. Did you ever know how he leans to art? Why, he's got about a square acre of sketches among his belongings—he's shown me some, and while I do not set myself up for a critic I do say that there is feeling in his stuff."
"I've seen that dogwood one he carries about with him," Matilda answered, leaning back on her pillow. "It gives me the creeps. Times are when I fancy there is a ghost of a girl face in the flowers. Sandy laughs at me—but I've caught the sight more than once in certain lights and its real upsetting."
"Well, I want that he should take all the art in that he's capable of digesting, and I want you to see mountains and what not that you've hungered after all your days and I want to see—Paris!"
"It's a real outlandish city for morals, Levi."
"Well, it will make me glad to get back to Boston, Matilda," Levi chuckled. "Now lie down and try to sleep."
"I feel real drowsy, Levi. My! how much I have got to be grateful for. You are a good man, brother. Time was when I feared success might harden you."
Levi did not rest well that night. Alone in his prim, old-fashioned chamber he lay and made plans for the future.
"And after we come back," he thought, "I'm going to send Sandy up to the hills with blank checks in his pocket. I'm going to see what he can do in the way of redeeming Lost Hollow. He'll never be happy away from that God-forsaken place—it's in his soul and system. There's that land, too, I bought seven years ago! That oughtn't to be lying fallow."
Then his roving thoughts settled on his sister. "Matilda must consent to more help here in the house—she looks peaked."
A sharp pang brought him to an upright position. He seemed to be beside lonely Sandy as he had stood that very day by an obscure grave—somewhere in a shabby little graveyard.