"Jim, for goodness sake, what now?" said Harry, rising. "What's up?"
"I've got it! I've got it!—the first place on 'the Forum!' Think of the luck! I've been talking with Ivison and Sears about it, and the papers are all drawn. I'm made now, you'd better believe. It's firm land at last, and I tell you, if I haven't scratched for it!"
"Wish you joy, my boy, with all my heart," said Harry, shaking his hand. "It's the top of the ladder."
"And I, too, Jim," said Eva, offering her hand frankly. "Sit down and have a cup of tea with us."
"You don't care, I suppose, what happens to me," said Jim in an abused tone, turning to Alice, who had sat quietly in a shaded corner through this outburst.
"Bless me, Jim, I've been holding my breath, for I didn't know what you'd do next. I'm sure I wish you joy with all my heart. There's my hand on it," and Alice reached out her hand as frankly as Eva.
It was a hand as fair, soft and white as a man might wish to have settle like a dove of peace and rest in his own; and, as it went into his palm, Jim could not help giving it a warm, detaining grasp that had a certain significance, especially as his eyes rested upon her with a flash of expression before which hers fell.
Alice had come to Eva's to dine, and they were now just enjoying that pleasant after-dinner hour around the fireside, when they sat and played with their tea in pretty teacups, and chatted, and looked into the fire. It is the hour dear to memory, when the home fireside seems like a picture, when the gleams of light that fall on one's plants and pictures and books and statuettes, bring forth some new charm in each one, giving rise to the exulting feeling, "Nowhere in the world is there a place so pretty and so cosy as this."
Now, Alice had been meditating a return to her own home that night, trusting to Harry for escort; but, at the moment that Jim took her hand and she saw the expression of his eyes, she mentally altered her intentions and resolved to remain all night. She was sure if she rose to go Jim would, of course, be her escort. She was not going to walk home alone with him in his present mood, and trust herself to hear, and be obliged to answer, anything he might be led to say.
The fact is well known to observers of mental phenomena, that an engagement suddenly sprung upon a circle of intimate acquaintances is often productive of great searchings of heart, and that it is apt to have a result similar to the knocking down of one brick at the extreme of a line of them.