Only one incident served to mar the pleasure of those first days in his new position. Jim Anderson had come to him one evening with a face in which joy and sorrow struggled for the mastery.
“Read that,” he said, and thrust a letter into Allan’s hand.
Allan opened it and read. It was a letter from an uncle, a brother of Jim’s father. The two had been estranged by family differences years before, and the brother, who had moved to Philadelphia and engaged in business there, had dropped entirely out of the other’s life. Now he was writing that his own wife and child were dead, that he was getting old and lonely, and that he would be glad to have his brother’s son and widow live with him. He could offer the latter a good home, and the former would be sent to college, and drilled to succeed his uncle in business. Although he did not say so, it was evident from the letter that if Jim proved worthy, he would take the place left vacant by the death of his uncle’s own boy.
“Well,” asked Jim, when Allan had finished, “what do you think of it?”
“Think of it? Why, I think it’s fine! Don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” said Jim, hesitatingly. “For one thing, I don’t want to leave Wadsworth. For another thing, I want to be a machinist.”
“Well, here’s a chance to be a big one. There are scientific courses at college which will give you just what you need. You won’t have to work in the shops all your life—you can be bigger than all that.”
“Then you’d advise me to go?”
“I certainly should,” answered Allan, warmly. “Though I’ll miss you awfully,” he added.
“I tell you what,” said Jim, “maybe I can persuade uncle to—”