There was almost an uproar among the children now, and Mary held
up the cambric embroidery towards her mother entreatingly, that it
might be put out of reach while the boys dragged her into a dance.
Mrs. Garth, in placid joy, began to put the cups and plates together,
while Caleb pushing his chair from the table, as if he were going
to move to the desk, still sat holding his letters in his hand
and looking on the ground meditatively, stretching out the fingers
of his left hand, according to a mute language of his own. At last
he said--
"It's a thousand pities Christy didn't take to business, Susan.
I shall want help by-and-by. And Alfred must go off to the engineering--
I've made up my mind to that." He fell into meditation and
finger-rhetoric again for a little while, and then continued:
"I shall make Brooke have new agreements with the tenants, and I shall
draw up a rotation of crops. And I'll lay a wager we can get fine
bricks out of the clay at Bott's corner. I must look into that:
it would cheapen the repairs. It's a fine bit of work, Susan!
A man without a family would be glad to do it for nothing."
"Mind you don't, though," said his wife, lifting up her finger.
"No, no; but it's a fine thing to come to a man when he's seen
into the nature of business: to have the chance of getting a bit
of the country into good fettle, as they say, and putting men into
the right way with their farming, and getting a bit of good contriving
and solid building done--that those who are living and those who come
after will be the better for.
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