"The hills will look so bare; I shall always remember the beautiful forest sweeping up to the mountain tops."
"Oh! the wood will be cut far up the range and there is enough about there for the country not to suffer for the want of it. We went over it together."
"Then I know it is all right!" teased Frances.
"He's working too hard," the professor went on, keeping to the topic in which he was so keenly interested.
"You know this is a busy season; after a while he can rest. You know what you often say, winter is the farmer's holiday."
"Yes, but shut up out there! I must send him some books." Frances watched in amusement as her father went to the shelves where his light literature was kept. "Pope's Iliad," he said thoughtfully, "read it in the original of course; Herodotus, I wonder how much Greek he knows; Carlyle, hm! Drummond, that will make him think at least—What?" for Frances was leaning against his shoulder and was laughing.
"What do you like yourself when you are idle or half sick, when there's a good hot fire to read and dream before?"
The professor reddened with conscience-stricken remembrance of a pile of paper-bound novels in the attic. "Get him something yourself, then!"
"I will!"
"I dare say he will like it better," retorted her father, who, blind to Lawson's attentions, had begun to suspicion Montague's, and to think with a half-pleased apprehension that it might be a desirable thing for some far-off day.