A month ago, when he first came to the farm, this calm assumption of his ability to carve whatever part he desired out of the journalistic cake would have fallen upon Seth like cruel and calculated sarcasm. As it was, he winced a little under its exaggeration, but the substance pleased him. He squared his shoulders unconsciously as he answered: “Well, I am only at the threshold as yet, but if there is any such thing as doing it, I am going to push my way on. It doesn’t seem so easy always, when you are right in the thick of the fight, but now, after my rest here, I feel like an eagle refreshed. I am full of new ideas and ambitions. I owe a good deal of it to Ansdell, I suppose. You never saw such a fellow for making everybody believe as he does, and take an exalted view of things, and long to be doing something great. John prescribed him to me as a doctor would some medicine, and I took him more or less under protest, but I feel immensely better already.” Isabel took only a languid interest in the inspiring qualities of this prodigy, and reverted to her own grievance: “Yes, you will go and conquer your position. I will stay here and count those miserable poplars across the road--did you ever see a more monotonous row?--and work anti-macassars for no one to see, and mope my heart out. Why, do you know, I haven’t one single correspondent!” The full enormity of the situation thus revealed was lost upon Seth, who had never written more than half-a-dozen letters in his life, and did not see why people who did not have to write letters should want to do so. But he said “Indeed!” as compassionately as he could. “No, not one. I did think you might have taken pity on me, but for all the year that you have been away, I have never heard a word from you.” “I wrote once or twice to Albert,” Seth answered, tentatively, to occupy time until he could turn around in his mind the immense suggestion involved in this complaint. “Yes, and I used to hear at the breakfast table--‘Oh, by the way, Aunt Sabrina, Seth sends his love to you and Isabel--’ only this and nothing more! What is the good of having a literary man in the family, if he doesn’t write you long, nice letters?” The vista which had flashed itself before Seth’s mental vision was filled with dazzling light. He could not mask the exultation in his voice as he asked: “Do you really want me to write to you?” “You ought not to have waited to be asked,” she said, smiling again. “Yes, you shall write me--and long letters too, mind--as often as you like.” She added after a moment’s pause, in which both had been turning over the same idea, “You needn’t be afraid of writing too often. The bundle from the post office always comes to me in the morning, hours before _he_ gets downstairs. Dana brings it up when he comes back from the cheese-factory, and it never goes into any one’s hands but mine. Beside, henceforth I shall watch for it all the more carefully.” *****