Uncle Terry: A Story of the Maine Coast

by Charles Clark Munn

"I can try," replied Albert quietly, "and as soon as I get used to your methods of procedure here I think I can succeed."

He was a little startled at the peculiar character of his employer, and in a way slightly disgusted, but he was not in a position to cavil or feel squeamish over apparent lack of honesty, and resolved at once to ignore it.

"What do you wish me to do?" he continued after a moment. "I will do the best I can for you and am ready to go to work now."

"You are to be at the office at eight o'clock sharp," replied Frye, "take one hour for lunch, and remain till six." Then he added by way of a spur to his slave's fidelity, "I am paying you seventy-five dollars a month on the recommend of an important client of mine who wanted to humor his son. It was your good luck to have this son's friendship, as he belongs to a wealthy family. He is a spendthrift, of course, but that is no matter, and all the better for us. Take my advice, and cultivate him all you can. It may be the means of bringing us more business. What I say to you I shall expect you to consider a professional secret and I hope you will make good use of your time when with this young friend of yours, and heed well what I have said to you."

That ended the interview and Albert was set at work copying legal documents and at the same time trying to reconcile himself to his new surroundings. That night he wrote to Alice: "I have hired out to a most unmitigated old scoundrel, and yet one of the sharpest lawyers I ever met. He assured me I must lay aside my conscience if I mean to succeed and hinted that he might use me later on as a sort of spy upon Frank, I imagine. He employs a stenographer of uncertain age who comes in and takes dictation and does her work outside. The only stupid thing he has said was to warn me not to flirt with her."

Then he wrote to his friend Frank, telling him where he was located, thanking him for his assistance, and begging him to call at an early date. After that he smoked for an hour in glum silence. His room was small and cheerless, and, in comparison with his home quarters, a mere den. But it was a question of saving, and the luxury of space, even, he could not afford. There is no more lonesome place in the wide world than a great city to one born and bred amid the freedom of the wide fields and extended woodlands as Albert had been, and now that he was shut in by brick walls all day, and imprisoned in one small room at night, with a solitary window opening on an area devoted to ash barrels and garbage, it made him homesick. He was a dreamer by nature and loved the music of running brooks, the rustling of winds in the forest, and the song of birds. The grand old mountains that surrounded Sandgate had been the delight of his boyhood, and to fish in the clear streams that tumbled down through narrow gorges and wound amid wide meadows, or in the lily-dotted mill pond, his pastime. He had the artist's nature in him also, and loved dearly to sketch a pretty bit of natural scenery, a cascade in the brook or a shady grotto in the woods. He loved books, flowers, music, green meadows, shady woods, and fields white with daisies. He had been reared among kind-hearted, honest, God-fearing people who seldom locked their doors at night and who believed in and lived by the Golden Rule. The selfish and distrustful life of a great city, with its arrogance and wealth and vanity of display, was not akin to him, and to put himself at the beck and call of a mercenary and utterly unscrupulous old villain, as he believed Frye to be, was gall and bitterness. For two weeks he worked patiently, hoping each day that the one and only friend the city held for him would call, passing his evenings, as he wrote Alice, "in reading, smoking, and hating myself a little, and Frye a good deal."

He had hesitated to write Frank in the first place, disliking to ask favors, but it could not be helped, and now he began to feel that his friend meant to ignore him. This humiliating conclusion was growing to a certainty, and Albert feeling more homesick than ever, when one afternoon, while he was as usual hard at work in Frye's office, Frank came in.

"Pray excuse me, old man," remarked that youth briskly, after the first greetings, "for not calling sooner, but I was off on my yacht about the time you came, and then I ran down to New York to take in the cup races. You see, I'm so busy I do not get any time to myself. I want you to come over to the club and lunch with me to-day, and we can talk matters over."

"You will kindly excuse me," replied Albert. "I have a lot of work cut out, and am only allowed one hour for lunch. Can't you come around to my room to-night and have a smoke-talk?"

"Maybe," replied Frank, "and we can go around to the club later. You will meet some good fellows there, and we always make up a game of draw—small limit, you know. Say, old man," he added interestedly, "how do you like Frye?"