"
"As widely as Webb and I," put in Burt.
"Thanks for so apt an illustration."
"Burt is what you would call a rampant grower, running more to wood and
foliage than anything else," Leonard remarked.
"I didn't say that," said Amy. "Moreover, I learned from my reading that
many of the strong-growing plants become in maturity the most productive
of flowers or fruit."
"How young I must seem to you!" Burt remarked.
"Well, don't be discouraged. It's a fault that will mend every day," she
replied, with a smile that was so arch and genial that he mentally
assured himself that he never would be disheartened in his growing
purpose to make Amy more than a sister.
CHAPTER XII
A MOUNTAINEER'S HOVEL
One winter noon Leonard returned from his superintendence of the
wood-cutting in the mountains. At the dinner-table be remarked: "I have
heard to-day that the Lumley family are in great destitution, as usual.
It is useless to help them, and yet one cannot sit down to a dinner like
this in comfort while even the Lumleys are hungry."
"Hunger is their one good trait," said Webb. "Under its incentive they
contribute the smallest amount possible to the world's work."
"I shouldn't mind," resumed Leonard, "if Lumley and his wife were pinched
sharply. Indeed, it would give me solid satisfaction had I the power to
make those people work steadily for a year, although they would regard it
as the worst species of cruelty.
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