"Pooh, pooh! Rolf won't care what the light burns that lights him to independence,--and when you get there you may illuminate with a whole whale if you like. By the way, Rolf, there is a fine water power up yonder, and a saw-mill in good order, they tell me, but a short way from the house. Hugh might learn to manage it, and it would be fine employment for him."
"Hugh!" said his mother disconsolately. Mr. Rossitur neither spoke nor looked an answer. Fleda sprang forward.
"A saw-mill!--Uncle Orrin!--where is it?"
"Just a little way from the house, they say. You can't manage it, fair Saxon!--though you look as if you would undertake all the mills in creation, for a trifle."
"No but the place, uncle Orrin;--where is the place?"
"The place? Hum--why it's up in Wyandot County--some five or six miles from the Montepoole Spring--what's this they call it?--Queechy!--By the way!" said he, reading Fleda's countenance, "it is the very place where your father was born!--it is! I didn't think of that before."
Fleda's hands were clasped.
"O I am very glad!" she said. "It's my old home. It is the most lovely place, aunt Lucy!--most lovely--and we shall have some good neighbours there too. O I am very glad!--The dear old saw-mill!--"
"Dear old saw-mill!" said the doctor looking at her. "Rolf, I'll tell you what, you shall give me this girl. I want her. I can take better care of her, perhaps, now than you can. Let her come to me when you leave the city--it will be better for her than to help work the saw-mill; and I have as good a right to her as anybody, for Amy before her was like my own child."
The doctor spoke not with his usual light jesting manner but very seriously. Hugh's lips parted,--Mrs. Rossitur looked with a sad thoughtful look at Fleda,--Mr. Rossitur walked up and down looking at nobody. Fleda watched him.