"Did you know that Uncle Dick has come?" she asked, joyfully. "Oh, how good of Mrs. Pine to send the chicken! We didn't have anything for supper but coffee and rolls and eggs. He's certainly bringing good things in his wake. How delicious that chicken does smell! Let's take it as a good omen, Alec, a forerunner of better days. He'll surely get you out of your slough of despond."
"Who, Flip? The chicken or Uncle Dick?" asked Alec, in his old jesting way, giving one of her long braids a tweak as he passed. A heavy load seemed to lift itself from Philippa's heart at this sign of Alec's return to his merry old self. All during supper she kept glancing at him, for, absorbed in their guest's interesting reminiscences, he seemed to have forgotten the grievances he had brooded over so long, and laughed and joked as he had not done for weeks.
To their great regret, Uncle Dick had to leave that night. Alec walked to the station with him, feeling that he was being subjected to a very close cross-examination as to his capabilities and preferences. The train was late, and as they sat in the waiting-room, the man fell into a profound silence, his hands thrust into his pockets and his brows drawn together in deep thought.
Finally he said: "You want to be a banker, like your grandfather. Well, I can't manage that, my boy. My influence doesn't lie in that direction. The best I can do is to get you in with the firm that manufactures all the shoes I sell. It is a big concern. The general manager of the factory at Salesbury is a good friend of mine, and I happen to know he is on the lookout for a reliable young fellow to put in training as his assistant. He is constantly giving somebody a trial, but nobody measures up to his requirements. Whoever takes it must go through a regular apprenticeship in the factory and learn the business from the ground up. According to his ideas, you'd not be fitted until you'd tried your hand at every piece of machinery in the factory, and knew how to turn out a pair of shoes from the raw leather. The wages will be small at first. Some of the duties are disagreeable, many of the requirements exacting, but promotion is rapid, and probably by the end of the year you'd be in the office, learning to take an oversight of the different departments; that is, if you had proved there was good stuff in you. If money is what you are after, this opening is better a thousand times than anything the village bank could give you in years, and in my opinion it's just as respectable a calling to handle leather as lucre. You'll have to work and work hard."
"I don't mind how hard the work is," answered Alec. "I hate to give up the one thing that has been my ambition all my life, but I have come to the point where I'd do anything honest to get a place somewhere out of this town. I'd even scrub floors. You don't know what I've been through this summer, Uncle Dick. Of course, you know about my father?"
He asked the question with such bitterness of tone that his listener scanned his face intently, then sympathetically.
"Well, I must get away from that," Alec continued. "It's an awful handicap. The thought of it made me desperate at times. If they should hear about him in Salesbury and turn me down on his account—well, I'd just give up! I couldn't stand any more than I have already suffered on his account."
There was no answer for a minute, then the deep voice answered, cheerily: "Alec, your grandmother Macklin once told me that when she was a very small child she went to visit her grandmother; quite a remote ancestor of yours that would be, wouldn't it? For some reason, she was put to sleep in a trundle-bed in the old lady's room, and along late in the night she was awakened by a very earnest voice. She sat up in the little trundle-bed to listen, and there was the old saint on her knees, praying for—now, what do you suppose? For 'all her posterity to the latest generation!' She said she didn't understand then what the words meant, but years afterward, when she held her first baby in her arms, they came back to her with a feeling of awe, to think that prayers uttered for him, long years before he was born, were still working to his blessing.
"It is the same with you, Alec. Evil influences were set afloat by your father's crime that will undoubtedly work against you many a time, but you must remember all the good that lies on the other hand to counteract them. Even your great-great-grandmother's prayers must count for something in your behalf. I remember that Alexander Macklin planted an apple orchard after he was eighty years old. He never lived to gather even its first harvest, but you have been enjoying it all your life. He did a thousand unrecorded kindnesses that brought him no returns seemingly, but 'bread cast upon the waters' does come back after many days, my boy, every time. And you will be eating the results of that scattering all your life. The little that I may be able to do for you will only be the result of kindness he showed me, and which I could not repay, but am glad now to pass it on to his grandson. Don't grow bitter because of your father, and say that fate has handicapped you. That admission of itself will sap your courage and go far toward defeating you. Say, instead, 'The Eternal Goodness will more than compensate for the evil that this one man has wrought me.' Then go on, trusting in that, and win in spite of everything. The harder the struggle the more praise to the victor, you know."
The whistle of the approaching train brought his little sermon to a close, and, seizing his satchel, he started hurriedly to the door. "I'll see the manager in a few days," he continued, hurriedly. "I have only a few stops to make this time on my way to Salesbury. Probably I'll have something definite to write you the last of the week. Good-bye and good luck to you!" He shook hands heartily, swung himself up on the platform, and disappeared into the car.