A week and a day after the opening of new vistas at Miss Grierson's "evening," Griswold—Raymer's intercession with the Widow Holcomb having paved the way—took a favorable opportunity of announcing his intention of leaving Mereside. It figured as a grateful disappointment to him—one of the many she was constantly giving him—that Margery placed no obstacles in the way of the intention. On the contrary, she approved the plan.
"I know how you feel," she said, nodding complete comprehension. "You want to have a place that you can call your own; a place where you can go and come as you please and settle down to work. You are going to work, aren't you?—on the book, I mean?"
Griswold replaced in its proper niche the volume he had been reading. It was Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, and he had been wondering by what ironical chance it had found a place in the banker's library.
"Yes; that is what I mean to do," he returned. "But it will have to be done in such scraps and parings of time as I can save from some bread-and-butter occupation. One must eat to live, you know."
She was sitting on the arm of one of the big library lounging-chairs and looking up at him with a smile that was suspiciously innocent and childlike.
"You mean that you will have to work for your living?" she asked.
"Exactly."
"What were you thinking of doing?"
"I don't know," he confessed. "I have been hoping that Raymer might help me to find a place; possibly in the machine works as an under bookkeeper, or something of that sort. Not that I know very much about any really useful occupation, when it comes to that; but I suppose I can learn."
Again he surprised the lurking smile in the velvety eyes, but this time it was half-mischievous.