knew to be a kind husband, a much loved father, and an excellent neighbor. If he were rather inclined to be lazy, liking better the fishing he had been born for than the farming he had not, and if he had a harmless eccentricity for doing fancy work, nobody save Miss Cornelia seemed to hold it against him. His wife was a “hustler,” who gloried in hustling; his family got a comfortable living off the farm; and his strapping sons and daughters, inheriting their mother’s energy, were all in a fair way to do well in the world. There was not a happier household in Glen St. Mary than the Holts’.
Miss Cornelia returned satisfied from the house up the brook.
“Leslie’s going to take him,” she announced. “She jumped at the chance. She wants to make a little money to shingle the roof of her house this fall, and she didn’t know how she was going to manage it. I expect Captain Jim’ll be more than interested when he hears that a grandson of the Selwyns’ is coming here. Leslie said to tell you she hankered after cherry pie, but she couldn’t come to tea because she has to go and hunt up her turkeys. They’ve strayed away. But she said, if there was a piece left, for you to put it in the pantry and she’d run over in the cat’s light, when prowling’s in order, to get it. You don’t know, Anne, dearie, what good it did my heart to hear Leslie send you a message like that, laughing like she
