I was wrong to let my little
girl worry herself all alone here, but I--I--thought it was all so--so
bright and free out on this hill,--looking far away beyond the Golden
Gate,--as far as Cathay, you know, and such a change from those dismal
flats of Tasajara and that awful stretch of tules. But it's all right
now. And now that I know how you feel, we'll go elsewhere."
She did not reply. Perhaps she found it difficult to keep up her injured
attitude in the face of her husband's gentleness. Perhaps her attention
had been attracted by the unusual spectacle of a stranger, who had just
mounted the hill and was now slowly passing along the line of
cottages with a hesitating air of inquiry. "He may be looking for this
house,--for you," she said in an entirely new tone of interest. "Run out
and see. It may be some one who wants"--
"An article," said Milton cheerfully. "By Jove! he IS coming here."
The stranger was indeed approaching the little cottage, and with
apparently some confidence. He was a well-dressed, well-made man, whose
age looked uncertain from the contrast between his heavy brown moustache
and his hair, that, curling under the brim of his hat, was almost white
in color. The young man started, and said, hurriedly: "I really believe
it is Fletcher,--they say his hair turned white from the Panama fever."
It was indeed Mr. Fletcher who entered and introduced himself,--a gentle
reserved man, with something of that colorlessness of premature age
in his speech which was observable in his hair.
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