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Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill - Or, Jasper Parloe's Secret by pseud. Alice B. Emerson
page 37 of 170 (21%)
"And then, there is Aunt Alvirah."

"Oh, yes. There is an old lady who keeps house for Mr. Potter. And she
seems kind enough, too. But she acts afraid of Mr. Potter. I don't
blame her, he is so grim."

The automobile, wheeling so smoothly over the hard pike, just then was
mounting a little hill. They came over the summit of this and there,
lying before them, was the beautiful slope of farming country down to
the very bank of the Lumano River. Fenced fields, tilled and untilled,
checkered the slope, with here and there a white farmhouse with its
group of outbuildings. There was no hamlet in sight, merely scattered
farms. The river, swollen and yellow with the Spring rains, swept upon
its bosom fence rails, hen-coops, and other flotsam of a Spring flood.
Yonder, at a crossing, part of the bridge had been carried away.

"If the dam at Minturn goes, we shall be flooded all through this low
land again," Helen Cameron explained. "I remember seeing this valley
covered with water once during the Spring. But we live on the shoulder
of Mount Burgoyne, and you see, even the mill sets on quite high
ground."

Ruth's eyes had already seen and lingered upon the mill. It was a
rambling structure, the great, splashing millwheel at the far end, the
long warehouse in the middle, and the dwelling attached to the other
end. There were barns, corn-cribs and other outbuildings as well, and
some little tillable land connected with the mill; and all the
buildings were vividly painted with red mineral paint, trimmed with
white. So bright and sparkling was the paint that it seemed to have
been put on over night.
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