THE NEW CLERK.

“Your mother’s out, as usual, I suppose,” said Mr. Tramlay to his oldest daughter, as he came home in the afternoon and roamed despondently about the house, after the manner of family men in general when their wives are away.

“She isn’t back from her ride yet,” said Lucia. “You know the usual drive always keeps her out until about six.”

“I ought to know it by this time, I suppose,” said the merchant, “and I don’t begrudge her a moment of it, but somehow the house is never quite the same when she is out of it.”

Lucia looked at her father with a little wonder in her face. Then she laughed, not very cheerfully, and said,—

“Father, do you know that you’re dreadfully old-fashioned?”

“I suppose so. Maybe it’s force of habit.”

Lucia still wondered. She loved her mother, in the instinctive, not over-intelligent way of most young people, but really she could not see what there was about the estimable woman that should make her father long to see her every day of the year and search the house for her whenever he returned. She{159} had never heard her father make romantic speeches, such as nice married people sometimes do in novels; and as for her mother, what did she ever talk of to her liege lord but family bills, the servants, the children’s faults, and her own ailments? Could it be, she asked herself, that this matter-of-fact couple said anything when alone that was unlike what the whole family heard from them daily at the table and in the sitting-room?

“Why are you looking at me so queerly?” suddenly asked the father. Lucia recovered herself, and said,—

“I was only wondering whether you never got tired of looking for mother as soon as you came home.”

“Certainly not,” said the merchant.

“Most husbands do, sooner or later,” said Lucia.

“Perhaps I will, some day,” the father replied; “and I can tell you when it will be.”

“Tell,” said Lucia.

“I think ’twill be about the day after eternity ends,” was the reply. “Not a day sooner. But what do you know about what some husbands do, you little simpleton? And what put the subject into your little head?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lucia, dropping upon the piano-stool and making some chords and discords. “It came into my mind; that’s all.”

“Well, I hope that some day you’ll find out to your own satisfaction. By the way, I wish you’d get out of that morning gown. My new clerk is coming to dinner.”{160}

“Oh, dear! then I’ll have dinner sent up to my room, I think. I don’t feel a bit well, and it’s awful to think of sitting bolt upright in a tight dress for an hour or two.” And Lucia whirled from side to side on the piano-stool, and looked forlorn and cross.

“I suppose it would be impossible to dine in a dress that is not tight?” said the father.

“Papa, please don’t tease me: I don’t feel a bit well; really I don’t.”

“What is the matter, child?” asked the father, tenderly. “Too much candy?—too few parties?”

“Oh, nothing, that I know of,” said the girl, wearily. “I’ll feel better when real cold weather comes, I suppose.” She played with the piano-keys a moment or two, and continued,—

“So you have a new clerk? I hope he’s nice?—not a mere figuring-machine?”

“Quite a fine fellow,” said the merchant. “At least, he seems to be.”

“Is he—have you given him the place you intended to offer Philip Hayn?”

“Yes.”

“The iron business is real good for a young man to get into, isn’t it?”

“Indeed it is, since iron has looked up.”

“And that stupid fellow might have had the chance if he hadn’t gone off home again without even calling to say good-by?”

“Just so.”

“Oh, I don’t want to see him,” said Lucia, pettishly. “I’m tired of young men.”

“What a mercy it is that they don’t know it!”{161} said her father. “They’d all go off and commit suicide, and then merchants couldn’t have any clerks at all.”

“Now, papa!” said Lucia, with a crash on the lower octaves of keys, followed by a querulous run, with her thumb, over the shorter strings. “Is the new clerk anybody in particular? What is his name?”

“Philip Hayn.”

Lucia sprang from the piano-stool and almost strangled her father with her slender arms.

“Gracious, Lu!” exclaimed the merchant. “Your mother’s family must have descended from a grizzly bear. But why this excitement?”

“Because you’re a dear, thoughtful old man, who’s always trying to do good,” said Lucia. “If ’tweren’t for you that poor young man might never have a chance in the world. I think it’s real missionary work to help deserving people who aren’t able to help themselves; I know it is; for our minister has said so from the pulpit again and again.”

“I’m real glad to learn that my daughter remembers some of the things she hears in church,” said the merchant. “So you think young Hayn deserves a chance in the world, eh?”

“I only know what you yourself have said about him,” said Lucia, demurely.

“Good girl! always take your father’s advice about young men, and you’ll not be mistaken in human nature. Which cut of the roast chicken shall I send up to your room?”

“Oh, I’ll try to come down, as it’s only Phil: maybe I can coax Margie to help me dress.”{162}

Lucia slipped slowly from the room, but went up the stairs like a whirlwind. The merchant sat down at the piano and made as dreadful a succession of noises as the much afflicted instrument had ever endured. He had to do something.

A quarter of an hour later Lucia floated down-stairs in a robe of pale blue, her face as fresh and bright as dawn.

“Sunrise at sunset!” exclaimed her father. “Well, girls are possessed to upset the natural order of things, I suppose. But, my dear daughter, you’ve put the rouge on too thick; don’t you think so?”

“Father!” exclaimed the girl, and the flush of her cheeks spread to her brow.

“Edgar,” said Mrs. Tramlay, who came in a moment or two after, “see how foolish you were to think Lucia ill. I never saw her looking better.”

“Yes,” said the merchant, dryly; “I told her the doctor was coming. That’s often enough to cure the ailments of some children, you know.” Then the merchant devoted ten minutes of business tact to the task of explaining to his wife the reasons of Philip’s return to New York; he also enlarged upon the Haynton Bay Improvement Company, and the probability that if the Tramlays were to build the first and handsomest house on the new property Mrs. Tramlay would naturall............