The same evening that Penfield’s fate was hanging in the balance, Uncle Ralph sat cosily by the library fire, newspaper in hand, and waiting for Aleck to come home. Everything was so sure to go well with his two faithful clerks, and the new luxury of home was so tempting, that he was getting into the way of leaving business early, and for the first time in his life enjoying his own fireside for an hour or two in the evening. But the newspaper was upside down this time, and his own thoughts seemed to be uppermost and so engrossing that he started when he heard Aleck’s key in the door.
“Well, sir,” he said, as Aleck came in with as light a step and as glowing a face as if such a thing as work had never been heard of, “I’ve been making a discovery, sitting here all alone; and that is, that I’ve been a poor fool not to have made a home for myself, in some shape or other, thirty years ago! Don’t you follow my example, old fellow. You must get a wife all in good time, but still it is possible there are some other things to be thought of first. What day is to-morrow?”
“Tuesday, I believe,” said Aleck.
“Humph! Yes. Anything else?”
“Only my birthday, so far as I know. I shall be twenty-one, I suppose, if I live to see it.”
“Ah! Well that is what I was thinking about half an hour ago, I believe; and I was only waiting for you to come home to ask you how you would like to have ‘Halliday’s’ known as ‘Halliday & Co.’ in future.”
Aleck started.
“O uncle, I don’t deserve that! That is too much!”
“We wont go as far as to talk of deserts,” said his uncle. “If I could tell you how my life came to be a lonely one, and how lonely it has been, you could understand better what you have been to me the last few years. If you had refused me when I asked you to come, I don’t know what I should have done, and it would be ten times worse to part with you now; and as one never knows what notion a young man may take, you see I’m only casting an anchor to windward for myself, if I can pin you a little closer. There aren’t many men lucky enough to have two such right-hands as you and Thorndyke; and if I can get one of them for a partner, why, we’ll divide the other between us, that is all. Thorndyke is a genius! If he keeps on at this rate, we old men may have to step aside and let him come in as number one some day, yet. But you are my brother’s son, Aleck, and I want you in my sight and by my side as long as I live; you have been the greatest comfort of my life; you have made a green spot in it the last few years, and it would be like going back to Sahara to give you up.”
Aleck did not sleep much that night; not for worlds would he have told his uncle that he had been fighting away with college studies all these years; and as he had watched Thorndyke coming on, a faint hope had grown stronger and stronger that he might take his place some day, and so much more than fill it that he could slip away without being really missed. But that was all gone now; he would never leave his uncle! And as for himself! Well, he had been happy in the store, even while dreaming all the time of getting away, and if he could once settle that question, and be done with fidgeting about it, he might be very happy. And he was quite sincere in all his gratitude to his uncle. He was giving him a position to be envied by any business man, and there was no better place than Halliday’s for making a fortune, at all events.