“If you had been a boy, and I own I am glad you were not—­a man wants a daughter—­I should have been quite willing to allow you your flutter on Wall Street, or your try at anything you felt you would like to handle.  It would have interested me to look on and see what you were made of, what you wanted, and how you set about trying to get it.  It’s a new kind of deal you have undertaken.  It’s more romantic than Wall Street, but I think I do see what you see in it.  Even apart from Rosy and the boy, it would interest me to see what you would do with it.  This is your ‘flutter.’  I like the way you face it.  If you were a son instead of a daughter, I should see I might have confidence in you.  I could not confide to Wall Street what I will tell you—­which is that in the midst of the drive and swirl and tumult of my life here, I like what you see in the thing, I like your idea of the lord of the land, who should love the land and the souls born on it, and be the friend and strength of them and give the best and get it back in fair exchange.  There’s a steadiness in the thought of such a life among one’s kind which has attractions for a man who has spent years in a maelstrom, snatching at what whirls among the eddies of it.  Your notes and sketches and summing up of probable costs did us both credit—­I say ‘both’ because your business education is the result of our long talks and journeyings together.  You began to train for this when you began going to visit mines and railroads with me at twelve years old.  I leave the whole thing in your hands, my girl, I leave Rosy in your hands, and in leaving Rosy to you, you know how I am trusting you with your mother.  Your letters to her tell her only what is good for her.  She is beginning to look happier and younger already, and is looking forward to the day when Rosy and the boy will come home to visit us, and when we shall go in state to Stornham Court.  God bless her, she is made up of affection and simple trust, and that makes it easy to keep things from her.  She has never been ill-treated, and she knows I love her, so when I tell her that things are coming right, she never doubts me.

“While you are rebuilding the place you will rebuild Rosy so that the sight of her may not be a pain when her mother sees her again, which is what she is living for.”

CHAPTER XXIII

INTRODUCING G. SELDEN

A bird was perched upon a swaying branch of a slim young sapling near the fence-supported hedge which bounded the park, and Mount Dunstan had stopped to look at it and listen.  A soft shower had fallen, and after its passing, the sun coming through the light clouds, there had broken forth again in the trees brief trills and calls and fluting of bird notes.  The sward and ferns glittered fresh green under the raindrops; the young leaves on trees and hedge seemed visibly to uncurl, the uncovered earth looked richly dark and moist, and sent forth the fragrance from