Richard, who overheard this remark, wondered what it meant, for he had not the most remote idea of separating himself from his mother. She was very essential to his happiness; and he was hardly willing to confess to himself how much during the last summer he had missed her. She had a way of petting him and deferring to his judgment and making him feel that Richard Markham was a very nice kind of man, far different from Ethelyn's criticisms, which had sometimes led him seriously to inquire whether he were a fool or not. No, he could not live apart from his mother--he was firm upon that point; but there was time enough to say so when the subject should be broached to him. So he went on nailing down the cover to the pine box, and thinking as he nailed what a nice kitchen cupboard the box would make when once it was safely landed at his home in the prairie, and wondering, too, how his mother--who was not very fond of music--would bear the sound of the piano and if Ethie would be willing for Melinda Jones to practice upon it. He knew Melinda had taken lessons at Camden, where she had been to school, and he had heard her express a wish that someone nearer than the village had an instrument, as she should soon forget all she had learned. Somehow Melinda was a good deal in Richard's mind, and when a button was missing from his shirts, or his toes came through his socks--as was often the case at Saratoga--he found himself thinking of the way Melinda had of helping "fix his things" when he was going from home, and of hearing his mother say what a handy girl she was, and what a thrifty, careful wife she would make. He meant nothing derogatory to Ethelyn in these reminiscences; he would not have exchanged her for a thousand Melindas, even if he had to pin his shirt bosoms together and go barefoot all his life. But Melinda kept recurring to his mind much as if she had been his sister, and he thought it would be but a simple act of gratitude for all she had done for him to give her the use of the piano for at least one hour each day.