"Queer business this seems of young Michael's. He's a steady, hard-working fellow, but none too well-off. Maybe old Peter left him something after all—unbeknown to any one?"
He did not exactly ask the question of Ysenda, but he looked at her as he spoke. He knew how very friendly she had been with the old man. She smiled, and her pretty eyes lighted up.
"Maybe," was all she said.
But an hour or two later, when her father had finished smoking his Sunday afternoon pipe, he called her.
"Ysenda," he said,—he was sitting in the porch, for the day was mild for the time of year,—"Ysenda, I'm thinking about that young fellow—Michael."
"Yes, father?" she said questioningly.
"You know that old Thomas is leaving us." Thomas was the farmer's head man. "He's getting past work, and he's got some tidy savings put by. He won't be badly off. I'm not sorry. I'd like some one younger and sharper about the place, though I'd scarce have found it in my heart to dismiss him. But he wants to go. I've been casting about for a new man. I wonder how Michael would do."
"Was it what you heard this afternoon that's made you think of him?" the girl asked, straight-forwardly.
The farmer seemed a little taken aback.
"Well—not exactly. But you see," he replied, "if so be that old Peter did leave him something, well then, Peter was a wise man, a very wise man—it shows he thought highly of the young fellow, and if he was to come to me instead of Thomas, I'd as lief as not that he had a something of his own. It would give him a better position over the others, you see."