"I can"t tell you exactly, as I am not very familiar with the country here. I know where I am going," he explained hastily, "but I doubt if I could tell you. We shall come to the end of the built-up part pretty soon, and then it takes us out into the country. There"ll be a turn or two, and what I want you to see is about two miles out. Mr. Morton,"
he added, "put a horse at my service, and I have been exploring. I have not wasted my time."
Mrs. Ladue made no reply. She was happy enough, without the need of speech. They drove on, past the built-up part, as Fox had said, past more thinly scattered houses, with little gardens, the corn-stubble already beginning to show above the snow, here and there, for it had been thawing. Then they began to pa.s.s small farms, and then, as they made the first of the turn or two, the farms were larger, and there were rows of milk-cans on their pegs in the sun.
Suddenly Mrs. Ladue laughed. "Now I know where I am," she exclaimed.
"That is, I remember that Uncle John Hazen brought me out here one day, nearly two years ago. He wanted to show me something, too."
Fox turned and looked at her. "That is interesting," he said. "I wonder if he showed you the same place that I am going to show you."
Mrs. Ladue only smiled mysteriously; and when, at last, Fox stopped his horse and said "There!" she was laughing quietly. He looked puzzled.
"The same," she said. "The very same."
"Well," Fox replied slowly, "I admire his taste. It is worth looking at."
It was a very large house, looking out from beneath its canopy of elms over a wide valley; a pleasant prospect of gentle hills and dales, with the little river winding quietly below.
"It is worth looking at," said Fox again. He looked at her, then. She was not laughing, but there was a merry look in her eyes. "What amuses you? I should rather like to know. Isn"t my hat on straight?"
She shook her head. "I"ll tell you before long. But it is really nothing." Truly it didn"t need much to amuse her on that day.
He looked at her again, then looked away. "The house looks as if it might have been a hotel," he remarked; "a little hotel, with all the comforts of home. It is very homelike. It seems to invite you."
"Yes," she replied, "it does."
"And the barn," he went on, "is not too near the house, but yet near enough, and it is very well ordered and it has all the modern improvements. All the modern improvements include a tiled milking-room and, next to it, a tiled milk-room with all the most improved equipment, and a wash-room for the milkers and a herd of about twenty-five registered Guernseys. I know, for I have been over it."
"That sounds very good. I know very little about such things."
"I have had to know. It is a part of my business. That barn and that outfit would be very convenient if the house were--for instance--a private hospital. Now, wouldn"t it?"
She made no reply and he turned to her again. She was looking at him in amazement, and her face expressed doubt and a dawning gladness.
"Oh, Fox!"
"Now, wouldn"t it?"
"Yes," she murmured, in a low voice.
"And the house seems not unsuitable for such a purpose. I have not been over the house."
"Fox! Will you tell me what you mean?"
He laughed out. "The old skinflint who lives there says he can"t sell it. He seemed very intelligent, too; intellect enough to name a price if he wanted to. And I would not stick at the price if it were within the bounds of reason."
"I think," Mrs. Ladue remarked, "that I could tell you why your old skinflint couldn"t sell it."
"Why?" Fox asked peremptorily.
"When you have shown me all you have to show," she answered, the look of quiet amus.e.m.e.nt again about her eyes and mouth, "I will tell you; that is, if you tell me first what you mean."
He continued looking for a few moments in silence. She bore his scrutiny as calmly as she could. Then he turned, quickly, and drew the reins tight.
"Get up, you ancient scion of a livery stable." The horse started reluctantly. "There is something else," he added, "just down the road a bit."
"I thought so," she said. "It is a square house, painted a cream color, with a few elms around it, and quite a grove at a little distance behind it."
"It is. But you forgot the barn and the chicken-houses."
She laughed joyously. "I didn"t think of them."
"And the well-sweep."
"I"m afraid I didn"t think of that, either."
"I should really like to know how you knew," he observed, as if wondering. "Perhaps it is not worth while going there. But I want to see it again, if you don"t."
"Oh, I do. I am very much interested, and you know you are to tell me what you are planning."
"Yes," he replied. "I meant to tell you. That was what I brought you for. But I thought you would be surprised and I hoped that you might be pleased."
"Trust me for that, Fox, if your plans are what I hope they are. If they are, I shall be very happy."
They stopped in the road before the square house that was painted cream color. Fox gazed at it longingly. It seemed to be saying, "Come in! Come in!" and reaching out arms to him. There was the old well at one side, with its great sweep. The ground about the well was bare of snow and there was a path from it to the kitchen door. Thin curls of smoke were coming lazily from each of the great chimneys.
He sighed, at last, and turned to Mrs. Ladue. "I should like to live there," he said.
"You would find it rather a hardship, I am afraid," she returned, watching him closely, "depending upon that well, picturesque as it is."
He laughed. "Easy enough to lay pipes from the hotel, back there." He nodded in the direction of the larger house, the one of the twenty-five Guernseys and the model barn. "They have a large supply and a power pump. Ask me something harder."
"The heating," she ventured. "Fires--open fires--are very nice and necessary. But they wouldn"t be sufficient."
He laughed again. "It is not impossible to put in a heating-system.
One might even run steam pipes along with the water pipes and heat from their boilers. I press the b.u.t.ton, they do the rest."
"Well, I can"t seem to think of any other objection. And there is a very good view."
"A very good view," he repeated. He was silent for a while. "I have done very well in the past five or six years," he said then, "and the wish that has been growing--my dearest wish, if you like--has been to establish a sort of private hospital about here somewhere. It wouldn"t be a hospital, exactly; anyway, my patients might not like the word.
And I should hate to call it a sanitarium. Call it Sanderson"s Retreat." He smiled at the words. "That"s it. We"ll call it Sanderson"s Retreat."
It would have warmed his heart if he could have seen her face; but he was not looking.
"I am very glad, Fox," she murmured. "That makes me very happy."
"Sanderson"s Retreat?" he asked, turning to her. "But I haven"t got it. Just as I thought I had found it I found that I couldn"t get it."
"Perhaps that old skinflint who lives there doesn"t own it," she suggested.