"No need of going to the hotel. I will call up one of the servants, and she can show you to a room."
"You are very kind, Mr. Sumner——"
"It is nothing, Hal, in comparison to what you have done for me. I shall reward you well if the missing box is recovered."
Quarter of an hour later Hal was shown to a bedroom on the second floor. It was quite the finest apartment of the kind he had ever entered. The servant opened the bed and drew the curtains, and then retired.
"Gracious, this is style!" murmured the youth, as he began to disrobe. "I wonder if I will ever own anything as nice?"
On the walls were a number of steel engravings and etchings, and on the mantel rested a large photograph of a handsome, middle-aged lady.
Hal gazed at the portrait for fully five minutes. The features were so motherly they appealed to his heart.
"It must be a picture of the late Mrs. Sumner," he thought. "What a good woman she must have been! No wonder Mr. Sumner and Miss Laura miss her."
And then, as he thought of his own condition—that of a mere poor-house foundling—his eyes grew moist.
"How I wish I had known a mother, and that she was like her," was his soliloquy. "Or that I had a father like kind Mr. Sumner—and such a girl like Miss Laura for a sister," he added, suddenly, and then he blushed.