The ship of the Floyd household, now navigating regardless of its customary dependence on the distant admiral of the whole Floyd fleet, was tossing in shallow yet stormy waters; there were not lacking indications that it was occasionally grazing bottom, and there was a notion abroad that it might presently beach or founder. Mrs. Floyd therefore manned the helm with more than her customary caution. For one thing, she set the ship's chronometer by local time. That is to say, her own watch, which had now been giving the time of Boston for the last three years (and she had become very expert in the deducting of the hour and some minutes of difference) came to be set by the hour of Chicago. For another thing, she must think twice before speaking every strange craft—such a one, for example, as that propelled by the Brainards. She did think twice, and concluded to remain silent.
"Huh!" said Cornelia; "all because I worked in her husband's office, and she met me there! Thank goodness, I wasn't allowed to have my wish and work for Ingles, too! I'll fetch things around, though—you see if I don't; and I'll capture Cecilia Ingles yet!"
Abbie, along with many other persons and things, became a mere piece of driftwood in the general wreck of her brother's fortunes. She swirled and eddied about for some time through a succession of boarding-houses, and after a while she found refuge in the latest home that her sister had made. She found her new brother-in-law a good-humored and well-disposed fellow. Briggs had established his family in the old neighborhood on the West Side, and readily admitted Abbie; he made no more objection to his sister-in-law than he had made to his sister-in-law's nephew.
Ogden saw nothing of them, heard nothing of them. He merely went around in a quiet way among a few old friends, and he dropped in at frequent intervals on the faithful Brower. Brower was sometimes at home and sometimes away; the fire-fiend still kept him on the move. One late September evening, after an interval of a month or more, Ogden repaired again to the house which had once been their common home, and found Brower just back from Minnesota.
He was seated on his trunk, the rigors of whose cover he had softened by the doubled folds of a striped travelling-wrap. He had his brier-wood pipe in his mouth and a book in his hand. It was a paper-bound volume; the back cover was missing, and there was exposed to view the fine, close tabulation of the books composing a well-known "library."
"Well, my dear fellow," cried Brower, rising and grasping his hand, "how are you? Say, I believe you're looking better. Here; put yourself in the light where I can have more of a chance at you."
George stood immovable, and Brower jerked out the elbowed gas-jet, so as to make the light fall upon his visitor's face. It fell on his visitor's head, too, and the whole brown head was sprinkled with silver.
Ogden put his two palms on his temples and spread out his hands until the finger-tips met over the part in his hair.
"There are more," he said, with a smile of quiet sadness; "don't count them again."
"I won't," said Brower. He drew away his eyes, but threw his arm over the other's shoulder.