"Calves always grow till they stop," said Ambrose, axiomatically.
"How high is she?"
He held his hand up over an imaginary back.
"Why, that is high! When she stops growing, Anna, I am going to sell her, sell her by the pound. She is my beef trust. Now don't forget, Mr. Webb, that I am coming out some day."
"I'll be there," he said, and he gave her a peculiar look.
"You know, Anna," said Harriet, when they were alone again, "that his wife treats him shamefully. I have heard mother talking about it. She says his wife is the kind of woman that fills a house as straw fills a barn: you can see it through every crack. That accounts for his heavy expression, and for his dull eyes, and for the groaning. They say that most of the time he sits on the fences when it is clear, and goes into the stable when it rains."
"Why, I'll have to be kinder to him than ever," said Miss Anna. "But how do you happen to have a calf, Harriet?" she added, struck by the practical fact.
"It was the gift of my darling mother, my dear, the only present she has made me that I can remember. It was an orphan, and you wouldn't have it in your asylum, and my mother was in a peculiar mood, I suppose. She amused herself with the idea of making me such a present. But Anna, watch that calf, and see if thereby does not hang a tale. I am sure, in some mysterious way, my destiny is bound up with it. Calves do have destinies, don't they, Anna?"
"Oh, don't ask me, Harriet! Inquire of their Creator; or try the market-house."
It was at the end of this visit that Harriet as usual imparted to Miss Anna the freshest information regarding affairs at home: that Isabel had gone to spend the summer with friends at the seashore, and was to linger with other friends in the mountains during autumn; that her mother had changed her own plans, and was to keep the house open, and had written for the Fieldings—Victor's mother and brothers and sisters—to come and help fill the house; that everything was to be very gay.