Poor Fred went back to his room sorely depressed. It was a quiet, clean room in a second-rate hotel, for which he paid twelve dollars a week. There he sat and brooded, until taking up the paper one morning he saw the arrival of one of his old professors at the "Grand Union." Perhaps he might put him in the way of something. So he plucked up heart, and went to call.
Professor Dennison received him very cordially, and expressed the warmest sympathy for the loss of his father and his fortune. He listened attentively to the young man's desires, and answered in suavest of tones.
There were so many applications: every avenue seemed full. Young lawyers and doctors, finding no opening, had gone back to teaching, and the college-graduates of every year swelled this number. He would bear it in mind, and see what he could do; but he advised his young friend not to build too high hopes. "If I could make a place I should put you in it at once," he said kindly, just as he said it to a dozen others.
It was so everywhere. There were no copyists, translators, or writers needed. The clerkships were overcrowded. It was not that there were too many doing one thing, but everything,—too many people in the world. Could the Malthusian doctrine be right, after all?
He dropped into his brother-in-law's office one morning, and, though he hated to ask a favor of him, discussed in a rather fragmentary and abashed way the possibility of getting any thing to do; and a fortnight after, Mr. Minor sent him word of a broker who wanted a clerk, salary fifty dollars per month.
It was better than nothing. Then, too, it was a beginning, although he could imagine more congenial employments. It did not look much like hard times, to note the immense amount of stocks and bonds that passed through the hands of this great house.
Just at this period Irene returned. A fine, stately girl, with the indescribable air that foreign society gives. Yet she seemed haughty, bitter, and satirical; and it came out presently that she and Gertrude had quarrelled over a possible husband, and the amiable Gertrude had taunted her with dependence in the future. Irene had sold some diamonds, and travelled on the proceeds.
"I think you were very short-sighted, Irene," said Mrs. Minor when she had drawn this story out of her sister. "A handsome American girl does stand a better chance for matrimony abroad than here. So many fortunes have been lost in the panic, and certainly I cannot blame these men for choosing heiresses. You have been in society a great deal here, and you will find fresh young girls beginning to crowd you out. Fred has nothing, and from present indications will hardly be able to take care of himself. It was such a misfortune that papa had every thing mortgaged! So Gertrude was right," in a bitterly suave tone: "you must be dependent upon some one until you do marry."
"Oh, no! I might set up millinery,—with my taste and aptitude for arrangement. I think I have read of reduced young women who made fortunes in that line," retorted Irene the queenly, in her unmoved way. She was not one to cry out at a dagger-thrust.
"Don't be a fool!" advised Mrs. Minor, in a short, incisive tone.