He had fallen with a
pleasant ease and smoothness into the rather curious life lived at
Elizabeth Boyd's bee-farm. A liking for picnics had lingered in
him from boyhood, and existence at Flack's was one prolonged
picnic. He found that he had a natural aptitude for the more
muscular domestic duties, and his energy in this direction
enchanted Nutty, who before his advent had had a monopoly of these
tasks.
Nor was this the only aspect of the situation that pleased Nutty.
When he had invited Bill to the farm he had had a vague hope that
good might come of it, but he had never dreamed that things would
turn out as well as they promised to do, or that such a warm and
immediate friendship would spring up between his sister and the
man who had diverted the family fortune into his own pocket. Bill
and Elizabeth were getting on splendidly. They were together all
the time--walking, golfing, attending to the numerous needs of the
bees, or sitting on the porch. Nutty's imagination began to run
away with him. He seemed to smell the scent of orange-blossoms, to
hear the joyous pealing of church bells--in fact, with the
difference that it was not his own wedding that he was anticipating,
he had begun to take very much the same view of the future that was
about to come to Dudley Pickering.
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