It was hard!
John walked up and down the floor, with his hands crossed behind, and Mrs. Harris went round the room, hunting after her spectacles, when they were comfortably reposing on the bridge of her fine Roman nose.
A knock at the door!
A note for John!
"Enclosed, find $500, to pay Mr. John Harris' house rent for the coming year.
A Friend."
John rubbed his eyes, and looked at his mother; his mother looked at me; and I looked at both of them; and then we laughed and cried, till we nearly had regular hysterics.
But who was the "Friend"? That was the question. We were all born Yankees, and did our best at "guessing;" but it didn't help us. Well, at any rate, it was very nice, all round. I hadn't to be routed. No, nor John, nor his dear old mother. And pussy purred round as if she had as much reason to be glad as any of us; and the canary trilled so sharp a strain that we were obliged to muffle his cage and his enthusiasm, with John's red silk pocket-handkerchief.
Mrs. Harris and I had not got our feminine tongues still, the next day, when John came back, in the middle of the forenoon, with another riddle, to drive our womanly curiosity still more distracted. He was requested to call immediately—so a note, he had just received, read—at Mr. —— & Co's, and "accept the head clerkship, at a salary of $1,400 a year; being highly recommended by a person whose name his new employers decline giving."
That was a greater puzzle still. John and his mother had rich relations, to be sure; but, though they had always been interfering in all their plans for making a living, they never had been known to give them anything except—advice, or to call on them by daylight; and it wasn't at all likely that the "leopard would change his spots," at that late day. No; it couldn't be John's rich relatives, who were always in such a panic lest upper-tendom should discover that their cousins, the Harrises, lived in an unfashionable part of the town, dined at one o'clock, and noticed trades-people and mechanics.