It was a cheerful, quiet little box of a place, after all, and the sun when it shone never forgot to send its warm rays across its worn and faded carpet. The whole place seemed to have been asleep for years, and only awakened now and then to receive its owner. Very few were aware that Enoch owned the building, but he did, the question of lease and rent and payment passing through other hands, according to his orders. How many of its occupants in years gone by had been in arrears and were astonished to find that no one insisted on their departure! Somehow they always paid in the end, yet they never knew that the testy and crabbed old lawyer, whose tirades against certain shrewd visitors could be plainly heard as far as the shaky, greasy elevator, was responsible for the kindly delay. He was kind, too, to the book-agent, especially the tired woman in the direst misery, bravely trying to sell one of those thick and superb volumes that are so often utterly useless to humanity. How many he talked to and sent away encouraged—often with new and practical ideas to better their condition.
He reached home this afternoon, still grumbling over the exhibition, and full of enthusiasm over Joe’s drawing.
“So Combes didn’t like the subject, did he? Combes is an ass,” he muttered, and arriving at Joe’s door, knocked thrice, found him out, hastily scribbled the following on his visiting card, and slipped it beneath his door:
Hearty Congratulations to you, my boy. I’ve seen it. Splendid. Don’t worry if it wasn’t hung on the line. It deserved it.
E. C.
Then he went on up to his room, where he made up his mind to pay his respects to Joe at his office the next morning. He paced around his centre-table, rubbing his hands with satisfaction.
“I’ll give him a surprise,” he smiled. “I’ll take that dear child with me; he deserves it.”
By some miracle, not a word had yet reached his ears of Lamont’s call, though Mrs. Ford had lost no time in telling the Misses Moulton the very first time she found their door ajar, prattling on effusively to Miss Ann about Lamont’s charm, his knowledge, and his princely manners.
As for Ebner Ford, he considered Lamont’s visit and his attentions to his stepdaughter purely in the light of business prosperity, and already foresaw, owing to Lamont’s social position, the patronage of a vast horde of fashionable people for his laundry company. More than once he was on the point of hunting up Lamont, and having a plain talk with him, of explaining to him clearly, man to man, a proposition which would mean dollars to them both. He decided to offer him something really worth while—a five per cent commission on the net profits of every client sent by him. He already saw Lamont persuading dozens of housekeepers, whose wealth and social position were renowned, to part with their laundresses and confide their delicate fineries to The United Family Laundry Association—and had blocked out a circular to the effect that the most expensive lingerie in the company’s care would come out unscathed from the wash. If business warranted it they would put in a separate plant of machines, exclusively devoted to the fashionable set, replacing any garment damaged, for a price estimated by an expert, and running ribbons for every lady client free of charge. And all this he explained to his wife, whom he had been parsimoniously spoiling of late with poor little Miss Ann’s money.
“Well, Em,” he concluded, “what do you think of it? Pretty encouraging, ain’t it?” Possibly for the first time in her married life with him she put down her plump foot firmly in opposition. She grew red and white by turns, and felt like weeping.