“I remember now,” said Mrs. Landholm paring her potatoes.  “What does he want?”

“What do you guess he wants?”

“Something from the farm, I suppose.”

“Not a bit of it.”

“Mr. Haye of Asphodel?” said Rufus.

“Asphodel? no, of Mannahatta; —­ he used to be at Asphodel.”

“What does he want, sir?”

“I am going to tell your mother by and by.  It’s her concern.”

“Well tell it,” said Mrs. Landholm.

“How would you like to have some company in the house this summer?”

Mrs. Landholm laid the potatoe and her knife and her hands down in the pan and looking up asked, “What sort of company?”

“You know he has no wife this many years?”

“Yes —­”

“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.”

“You told him! —­”

“Yes.  He was saying something about not knowing what to do with his girls last winter, and I remember I said to him that he had better send them to me; but I had no more idea of his taking it up, at the time, than I have now of going to Egypt.”

Mrs. Landholm did not speak.

“You have somewhere you can put them, I suppose?”

“There’s nobody in the big bedroom.”

“Well, do you think you can get along with it? or will it give you too much trouble?”

“I am afraid they would never be satisfied, Mr. Landholm, with the way we live.”

“Pho!  I’ll engage they will.  Satisfied! they never saw such butter and such bread in their lives, I’ll be bound, as you can give them.  If they aren’t satisfied it’ll do ’em good.”