"True enough! Well, mother, you are an old 'un!"
"Don't!"--with a look of disgust,--"don't use your sailor slang here! To see that doesn't require any particular shrewdness."
"But Mildred never liked me much. She always ran from me, like the kitten from old Bose. She has always looked as though she thought I would bite, and that it was best she should keep out of reach under a chair."
"Any young man of good address and fair intelligence can make an impression on a girl of eighteen, if he has the will, the time, and the opportunity. You have everything in your favor, and if you don't take the fortune that lies right in your path, you deserve to go to the poor-house."
Hugh meditated.
"Good-morning," said Mrs. Kinloch. "You know the horse and carriage, or the saddle-ponies, are always yours when you want to use them."
Great discoveries seem always so simple, that we wonder they were not made from the first. The highest truths are linked with the commonest objects and events of daily life.
Hugh looked about him as much astonished as though he had been shown a gold mine in old Quobbin, where he could dig for the asking. What determination he made, the course of our story will show.
CHAPTER VIII.
Hugh had ordered George, the Asiatic, to saddle the ponies after dinner, intending to ask Mildred to take a ride northward, through the pine woods; but on making inquiries, he found that she had walked out, leaving word that she should be absent all day.