"I must say, Lavinia, I am very greatly astonished. Won't come? She has done perfectly right. I think all the better of her for it. Really, there may be something in the girl after all. Let me look at her handwriting again—writes like a woman of some force. Won't come? What do you think, Lavinia?"
"Merely a question of grandmothers, my dear; she seems to have had one, too," answered the little old maid, with a quizzical smile in her eye, as she folded the letter and slipped it in her pocket.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LAST HOURS OF A CIVILIZATION
Margaret's decision saddened Oliver's last days at home, and he returned to New York with none of his former buoyancy. Here other troubles began to multiply. Before the autumn was gone, Morton, Slade & Co., unable longer to make headway against the financial difficulties that beset them, went to the wall, involving many of their fellow-merchants. Oliver lost his situation, in consequence, and was forced to support himself during the long dreary winter by making lithographic drawings for Bianchi, at prices that barely paid his board. His loneliness in the garret room became more intense, Fred being much away and the occupants of the other rooms being either strangers to him or so uncongenial that he would not make their acquaintance.
To his own troubles were added other anxieties. The political outlook had become even more gloomy than the financial. The roar of Sumter's guns had reverberated throughout the land, and men of all minds were holding their breath and listening, with ears to the ground, for the sound of the next shot. Even Margaret's letters were full of foreboding. "Father is more bitter against the South than ever," she wrote. "He says if he had ten sons each should shoulder a musket. We must wait, Ollie dear. I can only talk to mother about you. Father won't listen, and I never mention your name before him. Not because it is you, Ollie, but because you represent a class whom he hates. Dear John would listen, but he is still in Boston. Even his fellow-classmen want to fight, he says. I fear all this will hurt my work, and keep me from painting."
These letters of Margaret's, sad as they were, were his greatest and sometimes his only comfort. She knew his ups and downs and they must have no secrets from each other. From his mother, however, he kept all records of his privations during these troublous months. Neither his father nor his dear mother must deprive themselves for his benefit.
During these dreary days he often longed for Kennedy Square and for those whom he loved, but it was not until one warm spring day, when the grass was struggling into life, and the twigs on the scraggy trees in Union Square were growing pink and green with impatient buds and leaves that he had his wish. Then a startling telegram summoned him. It read as follows:
"Father ill. Come at once.
"Mother"