It seemed to him as if the clear cool breath
of the forest had entered with her homely garments, and the steadfast
truth of Nature were incarnate in her shining eyes. How far this poetic
fancy would have been consistent or even coexistent with any gleam of
tenderness or self-forgetfulness in Louise's equally pretty orbs, I
leave the satirical feminine reader to determine.
It was late when Bradley at last returned, bringing further and more
complete corroboration of the truth of Sharpe's good fortune. Two
experts had arrived, one from Pine Flat and another from the Summit, and
upon this statement Richardson had offered to purchase an interest in
the discovery that would at once enable the blacksmith to develop his
mine. "I shouldn't wonder, Mainwaring," he added cheerfully, "if he'd
put you into it, too, and make your eternal fortune."
"With larks falling from the skies all round you, it's a pity YOU
couldn't get put into something," said Mrs. Bradley, straightening her
pretty brows.
"I'm not a gold-miner, my dear," said Bradley, pleasantly.
"Nor a gold-finder," returned his wife, with a cruel little depression
of her pink nostrils, "but you can work all night in that stupid mill
and then," she added in a low voice, to escape Minty's attention, "spend
the whole of the next day examining and following up a boy's discovery
that his own relations had been too lazy and too ignorant to understand
and profit by.
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