VII
The professor was deeply interested in Edward Montague's plans; well as he had known his father, there was much of that father's later life of which he had no tidings. He had to learn what a house full of children was back there in the valley home, had to learn how Edward was compelled to give up his hope of college training—and this he learned between the lines—and how he had resolved instead to strike out for his own fortunes.
"I should have gone back to farming anyhow," the young man answered to some expression of the professor's, "it is my bent, you know, but it needs brains and training as well as any other profession," a little proudly, for he thought the professor would challenge it.
But it was the professor's own deep rooted belief. He listened delightedly as his young guest went on to speak of the farm he had bought and what he hoped to make of it. The old Northrup estate, some three miles out from Charlottesville, was a well known one throughout all Albemarle. A big brick house on the sunny slope of a mountain whose crest towered to the sky-line behind it, it had held many people, loved and known in the state, and had been the centre of a gay full life. But the old life had drifted away from it; some of those who had lived in the brick walls slept in the graves under the thick oaks not far away from the house; the rest were scattered, north, south, and west. The place had gotten into the hands of speculators. A northern farmer, thinking to make his fortune on cheap lands in a sunny climate, had bought it, but to face labor conditions of which he was ignorant and to find the only hopes of the fortune he sought were in a country store. He had nearly lost his life fording one of the mountain streams, between store and farm, after a freshet, and was desperately afraid of a second adventure. He sold it for nearly half its cost. Montague's investment had a good beginning and a better promise.
The professor kept him talking of it to the last moment he dared keep away from the lecture hall. "Come and see us," he urged when he was at last compelled to go. "It's going to be lonesome out there"—the estate was away from the beaten track—"come and take dinner with us, Sunday?"
Edward, glancing at Frances' bright face, thanked him as warmly as he had spoken. "I will walk down as far as the hall with you," he said. "I have some business in town I must attend to;" and he added shyly, "I shall be glad if you and Miss Frances will come and see me when I am established. Dr. Randall's wife will come with you, I think."
"That we will," assured the professor heartily.
"Bachelor's hall isn't very attractive," the young man went on deprecatingly; "the house is very bare."