CHAPTER IV

Mr. Fleming kept his forehead from his daughter's good-night kiss until
the room was cleared, after supper, and then embracing her very heartily,
he informed her that her uncle had offered to pay her expenses on a visit
to London, by which he contrived to hint that a golden path had opened to
his girl, and at the same time entreated her to think nothing of it; to
dismiss all expectations and dreams of impossible sums from her mind, and
simply to endeavour to please her uncle, who had a right to his own, and
a right to do what he liked with his own, though it were forty, fifty
times as much as he possessed--and what that might amount to no one knew.
In fact, as is the way with many experienced persons, in his attempt to
give advice to another, he was very impressive in lecturing himself, and
warned that other not to succumb to a temptation principally by
indicating the natural basis of the allurement. Happily for young and
for old, the intense insight of the young has much to distract or soften
it. Rhoda thanked her father, and chose to think that she had listened
to good and wise things.

"Your sister," he said--"but we won't speak of her. If I could part with
you, my lass, I'd rather she was the one to come back."

"Dahlia would be killed by our quiet life now," said Rhoda.

"Ay," the farmer mused. "If she'd got to pay six men every Saturday
night, she wouldn't complain o' the quiet. But, there--you neither of