"Macassar Jones sighed deeply. Nature had not made the senior clerk a cruel man; but yet this allusion was cruel. The young Macassar had drunk deeply of the waters that welled from the fountain of Sir Gregory's philosophy. He had been proud to sit humbly at the feet of such a Gamaliel; and now it rent his young heart to be thus twitted with the displeasure of the great master whom he so loved and so admired.
"'Well, go, Mr. Jones,' said the senior clerk, 'go, but as you go, resolve that to-morrow you will remain at your desk. Now go, and may prosperity attend you!'
"'All shall be decided to-day,' said Macassar, and as he spoke an unusual spark gleamed in his eye. He went, and as he went the senior clerk shook his thin grey hairs. He was a bachelor, and he distrusted the charms of the sex.
"Macassar, returning to his desk, took up his hat and his umbrella, and went forth. His indeed was a plight at which that old senior clerk might well shake his thin grey hairs in sorrow, for Macassar was the victim of mysterious circumstances, which, from his youth upwards, had marked him out for a fate of no ordinary nature. The tale must now be told."
'O dear!' said Linda; 'is it something horrid?'
'I hope it is,' said Katie; 'perhaps he's already married to some old hag or witch.'
'You don't say who his father and mother are; but I suppose he'll turn out to be somebody else's son,' said Linda.
'He's a very nice young man for a small tea-party, at any rate,' said Uncle Bat.
"The tale must now be told," continued Mrs. Woodward. "In his early years Macassar Jones had had a maiden aunt. This lady died—"
'Oh, mamma, if you read it in that way I shall certainly cry,' said Katie.