“No worry!” murmured Mr. Fletcher, pressing his hand to his brow. “Alas! when have I been free from it?”
“Well, it is worry and not work that kills people,” went on Mr. Willey. “So stay out here and buy a quarter section; ’twill make you ten years younger. No life so happy as a farmer’s life.”
“The very thing I intend to do,” said Mr. Fletcher. Here Mabel clapped her hands, and all the little ones laughed and clapped their hands too; while Mrs. Willey said to herself: “How very pleasant it would be if the son of my old lover were to marry Mabel!”
It was long since Mr. Fletcher had passed a happier day than this first day in Illinois; the balmy air, the entire change of scene, the gladsome faces around him, but above all the company of sweet Mabel, who insisted on showing him all over the homestead, obliterated from his mind the troubles and worries he had gone through and really made him feel many years younger.
The following week Mrs. Willey was delighted when she heard Harry ask her daughter to take a row on the river. “I have only a short letter to write,” said the youth, “then I’ll be ready. Will you come?”
“Suppose we take a row,” said Harry’s father to Mabel a few minutes later—he had not heard Harry’s invitation.
“To be sure,” replied Mabel. “But shall we go immediately, sir, or wait for your son? He asked me to go with him as soon as he had done a little writing.”
“Oh! indeed,” said Mr. Fletcher; and now for the first time it occurred to him that perhaps Harry might fall under the influence of this simple yet bewitching maiden. “Well, if he does,” he added inwardly, “dearly as I feel that I could love her—for her mother’s sake, dearly, dearly—I’ll not stand in my boy’s way.”
However, Mr. Fletcher and Mabel did go down to the river without waiting for Harry, who made his appearance on the bank in less than twenty minutes, waving his hand and shouting lustily.
But Mr. Fletcher seemed not to hear his voice; at least he did not hear it for a long time—so long that Mabel fancied the old gentleman, as she inwardly called him, must be a little deaf. At length she made bold to inform him that his son was calling; whereupon Mr. Fletcher looked round and exclaimed: “Oh! ay, to be sure, so he is.” And now the bow of the skiff was turned slowly shoreward. But the oars did not move very briskly; nay, so sluggishly were they plied that the boat drifted a good half-mile below the landing-place—poor Harry following it along the shore, while Mabel was tempted more than once to ask her companion to let her have the oars.