CHAPTER XXIV.
WILLIE'S PLANS BEAR FRUIT.
When his studies were finished, Willie returned to assist his father, for he had no desire to settle in a great city with the ambition of becoming a fashionable doctor getting large fees and growing rich.

He regarded the end of life as being, in a large measure, just to take his share in the general business.
By this time the reputation of the Prior's Well had spread on all sides, and the country people had begun to visit the Leas, and stay for a week or ten days to drink of the water.

Indeed so many kept coming and going at all hours through the garden, that the MacMichaels at length found it very troublesome, and had a small pipe laid to a little stone trough built into the garden wall on the outside, so that whoever would might come and drink with less trouble to all concerned.
But Willie had come home with a new idea in his head.
An old valetudinarian in the city, who knew every spa in Europe, wanted to try that of Priory Leas and had consulted him about it.

Finding that there was no such accommodation to be had as he judged suitable, he seriously advised Willie to build a house fit for persons of position, as he called them, assuring him that they would soon make their fortunes if they did.

Now although, as I have said, this was not the ambition of either father or son, for a fortune had never seemed to either worth taking trouble about, yet it suggested something that was better.
"Why," said Willie to his father, "shouldn't we restore a bit of the Priory in such a way that a man like Mr Yellowley could endure it for a little while?
He would pay us well, and then we should be able to do more for those that can't pay us." "We couldn't cook for a man like that," said his mother.
"He wouldn't want that," said his father.