This was a larger sum than Mrs. Ogden had hoped; but she showed no sign of rejoicing beyond a quiet smile. "And where do you think of buildin' it?" "Well, mother, if you don't mind sellin' me Little Mouse Field, it's the best mill-site in all Shayton. There's that water-course so handy; and it'll increase the valley[13] of our land round about it." Mrs. Ogden was perfectly soothed by this time. Jacob wanted to borrow four thousand pounds of her. She had coal under her little farms, of which the accumulated produce had reached rather more than that amount; and she promised the loan with a facetious hope that the borrower would be able to give her good security. As to Little Mouse Field, he was quite welcome to it, and she begged him to accept it as a present. "Nay, mother; you shouldn't give me no presents bout[14] givin' summat to our Isaac. But I reckon it's all one; for all as I have, or shall have, 'll go to little Jacob." "Eh, how you talk, lad! Why, you'll get wed an' have chilther of your own. You're young enough, an' well off beside." "There's no need for me to get wed, mother, so long as th' old woman lasts, an' who'll last a long while yet, I reckon. There's none o' these young ladies as is kerfle enough to do for a man like me as has been accustomed to see his house well managed. Why, they cannot neither make a shirt nor a puddin'." These disparaging remarks concerning the "Girl of the Period" filled (as they were designed to fill) Mrs. Ogden's mind with tranquillity and satisfaction. To complete her good-humor, Jacob unrolled the plans and elevation of his new mill. The plans were most extensive, but the elevation did not strike the spectator by its height; for as the site was not costly, Jacob Ogden had adopted a system then becoming prevalent in the smaller towns of the manufacturing districts, where land was comparatively cheap--the system of erecting mills rather as sheds than on the old five-storied model. His new mill was simply a field walled in and roofed over, with a tall engine house and an enormous chimney at one end. People of æsthetic tastes would see nothing lovely in the long straight lines of roofs and rows of monotonously identical windows which displayed themselves on the designs drawn by Ogden's architect; but to Ogden's eyes there was a beauty here greater than that of the finest cathedral he had ever beheld. He was not an imaginative person; but he had quite enough imagination to realize the vista of the vast interior, the roar of the innumerable wheels, the incessant activity of the living makers of his wealth. He saw himself standing in the noble engine-room, and watching the unhurried see-saw of the colossal beams; the rise and fall of the pistons, thicker than the spear of Goliath, and brighter than columns of silver; the revolution of the enormous fly-wheel; the exquisite truth of motion; the steadiness of man's great creature, that never knows fatigue. That engine-room should be the finest in all