Read "The Fairchilds" by Lucy Ellen Guernsey online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
WHEN Eben came back from seeing home his mother and the girls, and shut himself into his room, with no company but his lamp and his little stove, he did not find the solitude so pleasant. He could not but own that the voice of the water as it rushed and moaned and gurgled under the mill, and the sound of the wind around the corners of the large building, were rather airy and lonesome. The room itself was as bright and cheerful as possible, but he did not quite like to think that it was the only inhabited corner in the great rambling old building, where ever so many people might hide and never be found out.
"But this will never do! " said Eben, rousing himself from the mood that was stealing over him. "I shall be seeing robbers next. I am just as well off here as if I were at home, and I am not going to be afraid, now that I have undertaken the job. So come down here, old Carpenter, and let's have a grind at you before bed-time, if you have no objection."