Harry Fenimore's Principles

by Isabel Thompson Hopkins

So it was all settled, and no one was more proud of the new arrangement than the senior clerk, as Thorndyke now became.

“And a lucky fellow you are, Thorndyke, to get your foot on that round in the ladder,” said Tom, who had come in to see how Aleck carried his new dignity, and stopped, as he always did, for a few words with Thorndyke. “If I thought I should ever get to that I should take courage, but it seems as if I never should; and I don’t know that I shall be any better off, after all, when the day comes at last.”

Thorndyke glanced quickly in Tom’s face. It had seemed to him looking rather wobegone for some time past, and he wondered if Tom was having any trouble. He could give a faint guess, for he had been sent over to Fenimore & Co.’s a good many times since he had been in the store, and though the thought of Hal was so inseparably connected with the one terrible memory of his life, that he had avoided even the sight of him when possible, he had heard him speak to Tom with those same taunting tones that brought the whole thing up with a rush, and made him tingle to his fingers’ ends for Tom. Never since that dreadful day could he hear an unkind word spoken to any human being without a shiver through his own heart; and when it came in Hal’s own voice, he could only look at Tom and wonder how he could bear it, and wish he were a strong man and a rich one, that he might somehow get hold of him and pull him out of the reach of it.

“It wont be very long, will it?” he asked; “isn’t Hal going in as partner soon?”

“Yes,” said Tom, “in two or three months; but there’s Gray between us, you know; and, after all, I don’t know that it makes any great difference. It will be the same old mill, whatever wheel in it I turn, and the same ugly grind. Some day before I know it I shall find it has ground whatever soul I ever had into such small dust I cannot find it.”

“If you think there is any danger of that, why don’t you get out of it?” asked Thorndyke, more earnestly than he dared to show Tom, and the next moment he was almost frightened at the look that came into Tom’s face.

“I tell you,” said Tom, “it’s all very fine to ask a drowning man why he don’t catch at some straw, when there are half a dozen other people hanging on him at the same time. If it wasn’t that they’re depending on me at home, and have been waiting for me all these years, the world isn’t so wide but I’d put half of it between me and Fenimore’s before many days had passed. But, as things are, of course there’s nothing for it but to stick by. I’ll hold on as long as I can, but if I go down, and the rest with me, I can’t help it.”

Tom’s eyes met Thorndyke’s with an almost desperate look, and then he turned suddenly away. “Pshaw, Thorndyke, I tell you again you don’t know what a lucky dog you are. Shut up here with a fellow like Aleck I should not think you had a trouble left in the world!”

So it was all out! It was Hal, as Thorndyke had thought! And with Tom’s forlorn face turning away as if ashamed of what he had said, Thorndyke felt more troubled than ever. What could he do about it?—as he had asked himself many times before.

But after Tom had gone the consciousness of another pain came over him; he had felt it like a stab, at Tom’s last words, but he was too much engrossed by anxiety for him, to dwell upon them at the moment; now they came echoing back: “I shouldn’t think you’d feel you had a trouble in the world.”