"Well — he's a couple of little girls that he wants to put somewhere in the country this summer, for their health, I understand."
Mrs. Landholm took up her knife again and pared potatoes diligently.
"Does he want to send them here?"
"He intimates as much; and I have no doubt he would be very glad. It wouldn't be a losing concern to us, neither. He would be willing to pay well, and he can afford it."
"What has he done with his own place, at Asphodel?" said
Winthrop.
"Sold it, he tells me. Didn't agree with his daughter, the air there, or something, and he says he couldn't be at the bother of two establishments without a housekeeper in nary one of 'em. And I think he's right. I don't see how he could."
Winthrop watched the quick mechanical way in which his mother's knife followed the paring round and round the potatoes, and he longed to say something. "But it is not my affair," he thought; "it is for Rufus. It is not my business to speak."
Nobody else spoke for a minute.
"What makes him want to send his children here?" said Mrs.
Landholm without looking up from her work.
"Partly because he knows me, I suppose; and maybe he has heard of you. Partly because he knows this is just the finest country in the world, and the finest air, and he wants them to run over the hills and pick wild strawberries and drink country milk, and all that sort of thing. It's just the place for them, as I told him once, I remember."