“And you have come for the things aunt is to send him?”
“Yes.”
“Aunt said you were to drive uncle's horse and take the buggy,” said Ellen. “It is very kind of you. While you are harnessing, aunt and I will pack the basket.”
Stephen, harnessing the gray horse, had a sense of shock; whether pleasant or otherwise, he could not determine. He had never seen a girl in the least like Ellen. Girls had never impressed him. She did.
When he drove around to the kitchen door she and Myrtle were both there, and he drank a cup of coffee before starting, and Myrtle introduced him. “Only think, Mr. Wheaton,” said she, “Ellen says she knows a great deal about farming, and we are going to hire Jim Mason and go right ahead.” Myrtle looked adoringly at Ellen.
Stephen spoke eagerly. “Don't hire anybody,” he said. “I used to work on a farm to pay my way through college. I need the exercise. Let me help.”
“You may do that,” said Ellen, “on shares. Neither aunt nor I can think of letting you work without any recompense.”
“Well, we will settle that,” Stephen replied. When he drove away, his usually calm mind was in a tumult.
“Your niece has come,” he told Christopher, when the two men were breakfasting together on Silver Mountain.
“I am glad of that,” said Christopher. “All that troubled me about being here was that Myrtle might wake up in the night and hear noises.”