ERHAPS you think that is a queer title for a chapter. You would not think it queer at all if you had known her, for that is exactly what she was, and now and then it is just as well to call people by their right names. She was not old, however, in the sense of being wrinkled and white-haired and thin. Sometime, when somebody has been very kind to you, and has done you a “good turn” in real reliable fashion, haven’t you just rushed up to them and exclaimed, “You dear old thing,” as if any mere young thing would be quite incapable of such a deed of loving-kindness? Well, in just the sense of being very kind and very reliable, Aunt Frances was old, and in no other. To be sure, she was nearing her fiftieth birthday, and there was a generous sprinkling of gray hair on her temples, but the gray hair only made her face softer and sweeter, and her heart was no older than bonny Kate’s.

Well, Aunt Frances sat knitting in a high-backed rocker on the wide step in front of the Van Vleet’s door, a step that was made from one great unhewn stone, but whose roughnesses had been rounded down by the rains and storms of a hundred summers and winters. On the edge of the step, with his back against one of the large tubs of hydrangea which flanked the wide door-step on either side, sat Harry Avery. He had been silent for a long while. He was trying to get his courage up to say something to Aunt Frances, something that he knew it would grieve her to hear, and she had had so much to bear lately, he could not easily bring himself to it. “Aunt Frances,” he said, at last, “I know you’ll be sorry about it, but I think I shall have to go away to-morrow.”

“Why, Harry, what do you mean?” while the tears gathered as quickly in her kind eyes as the clouds of an April shower darken an April sky, “and besides, where will you go?”

“Home, I suppose,” and then it would have been an easy thing for Harry, grown fellow that he was, to have mustered a few honest tears on his own account.

“You see I am not willing to stay here any longer since you have to pay my board. And then you have so little money coming in now.”

“But the Van Vleets only allow me to pay a very small sum, and, Harry, you are such a comfort to me. Starlight’s a dear, good boy, but he is not old enough for me to burden him with all my troubles as I do you. Tell me this, do you want to go home?”

“No, I do not want to go home in the least. You know what I mean. I’d give a great deal to see father and mother and the youngsters; but there’s nothing for me to do in New London—that is, not the sort of work that I think I am equal to, and, after leaving it the way I did, I hate to go back empty-handed. Then, I’m sure, father would much rather I’d find something to do in New York. He believes there is a good deal more of a chance for a fellow here.”



0100

“And you have heard of nothing, Harry; nothing whatever?” Aunt Frances let her knitting fall in her lap, and looked straight at Harry as she spoke. There was something strange about this direct look from Aunt Frances. It seemed to compel the exact truth from everybody, even from Pat, the Van Vleets’ hired man, who did not ordinarily hesitate in telling an untruth if it would make things more comfortable. And so Harry did not even succeed in making an evasive reply, as he should like to have done, but just answered, very simply and honestly: “Yes, Aunt Frances, I did hear of something—a clerkship in a lawyer’s office—but I decided not to take it.”

“Decided not to take it? Why, that is the very position you said you would like above all others!”

“Did I say that? well, fellows are queer sometimes, aren’t they?”

“Harry Avery, there is something mysterious about all this. What was the name of the lawyer?”

“Oh, no matter, Auntie! The whole matter’s decided. I made up my mind not to take it, and that ends it.”

Aunt Frances was not to be silenced in this fashion. She had a right to search this matter out, and search it she would. “Harry,” as if she were speaking to some little child, “Harry, look me right in the eyes, and tell me, was it Colonel Hamilton?”

Yes but Harry looked off at the river. He had not the sort of courage to look Aunt Frances “right in the eyes,” as she bade him, for if there was a man anywhere whom she had a right thoroughly to despise, surely it was Colonel Hamilton—Colonel Hamilton, whose skilful reasoning had deprived her of the home that was almost as dear to her as life itself.

“Is the position still open to you?” Aunt Frances was now gazing off to the river, and with the mark of deep thinking on her face. “If it is, you must take it. Colonel Hamilton is a great lawyer. It is as fine an opening as you could possibly desire. I, for one, have no notion of standing in your light, Harry, and you must not do yourself the injustice of standing in your own.”

“But, Aunt Frances—”

“No, don’t interrupt me, Harry; only listen, like a good boy, and do just as I tell you. Take the ‘Gretchen’ first thing in the morning, go straight to Colonel Hamilton’s office, and apply for the place. Tell him all about yourself, and answer every question he may ask in the most straightforward manner, but do not volunteer the information that you are a relative of mine. It would not do you any good and it might do harm—that is, it might incline the Colonel less kindly toward you. Unless some one has gotten ahead of you, you will secure the place, I am sure of it, and no one will be more glad fo............