“Why, yes. Have I not been steadily at work in Wall Street more than twenty years? During all that time no holiday have I taken—not one, except a fortnight after your mother’s death. Then I own I did pass a short while in the country, for grief rendered brain labor out of the question. And now I am worth a million at the very least; and with such an example as I have set you would you lead a drone’s life?”
“Well, but, father, I am quite satisfied with our fortune; ’tis large enough, and I—I have promised Miss Gibbon that we should make our home abroad.”
Mr. Fletcher was so taken aback by these words that he could only knit his brow; he could not speak.
Then Harry proceeded: “And, father, I think you ought to take a holiday this season. What is the use of racking your brains for more money, since you have a million? Oh! I wish you had been with me at North Conway. I had such pleasant rambles among the hills, such fine trout-fishing! And in one of my walks—’twas the morning I proposed to Kitty—I found our name carved on a tree.” The youth now described the big beech and the brook and the old farm-house; for it was a never-to-be-forgotten morning, and he loved to tell all he remembered of those happy hours.
While he was speaking the look of displeasure which had clouded his father’s face when he began gradually passed away; the stern, matter-of-fact business man grew pensive; and when at length Harry came to describe Mabel—dark-eyed, barefooted, graceful Mabel Willey—the attentive listener shaded his eyes with his hand, and Harry could not imagine why his parent sighed. But the young man adroitly took advantage of his emotion to again ask if he might not go live in Paris. “I promised Miss Gibbon, father, that we would make our home there. You surely would not have me break my word?”
Mr. Fletcher merely answered: “Hush! speak no more about it. Go! go!”
Whereupon Harry, now in the blithest of moods, hurried off to get his trotting-wagon; for he had invited Kitty to take a drive in the Central Park.
At this same hour, while Harry and his betrothed were enjoying themselves together, conversing chiefly about Europe—their own country seemed to hold very little place in their thoughts—Mabel Willey was engaged in household duties with her mother.
Mabel was right when she praised her Western home: a log-house standing on a knoll which overlooked a swift-flowing river; beyond the river a broad expanse of rolling prairie, where the grouse were wont to gather in springtime, and for hours long their voices, saying, “Coo-ooo, coo-ooo, coo-ooo,” would reach Mabel’s ear; while ever and anon a black bass would spring up out of the flood, marking the spot where he fell back into the water by a ring of widening, quivering ripples. And, oh! how the girl loved these sights and sounds. But most of all did she love the deer, who would steal out of the forest of a moonlight night in autumn and make incursions into the corn-field hard by. Nothing had ever disturbed the harmony of this sweet spot. Husband and wife loved each other with true love, and God had blessed them with six children, of whom Mabel was the eldest; and when you saw Robert Willey felling a tree or following the plough you knew where his offspring had derived their health and strength from, while in the mother’s face still lingered traces of the beauty which young Mabel had inherited. But Robert did not perceive that his Mabel was changed: no, as fair in his eyes was she now as when he wooed her in the far-off days of his youth.
Above the broad fireplace in the room where the family assembled of an evening, to chat and make merry after the labors of the day were over, were these words, painted in large letters and taken from the Book of Proverbs: