"Do you know, Rose," she said, "I don't think I should be happier if our share of grandfather's money had come to us, as we once anticipated."
CHAPTER XXI.
The Collapse of an Elderly Dude.
The remarkable change that had taken place in the fortunes of Rose Beaufort interfered seriously with the plans of a person who has thus far only been incidentally mentioned—the superintendent of the work department of Nicholas Walton's large clothing store.
Hugh Parkinson was a man no longer young. If not forty, he looked that age. Moreover, his natural attractions, which were very scanty, had not been increased by the passage of time. His hair, which was of a reddish tinge, was carefully combed up from the side to cover the rather extensive vacancy for which time and irregular hours were responsible; but to look young was a problem which he had not been able to compass. He did what he could, in the way of dress, to make up for the ravages of time. He always got his clothes made by a fashionable Broadway tailor, and in the street he looked like an elderly "dude," and thus far more ridiculous than the younger specimens of this class.
Perhaps it is well for our self-conceit that we do not see ourselves as others see us. Hugh Parkinson, when he surveyed himself in the mirror, decided that he was handsome and stylish-looking. He felt that it was time he married. His salary was a liberal one—fifty dollars per week—and he had a snug sum in various savings banks, representing the savings of the last ten years.
"I'm a good catch!" he said to himself, complacently; "I've a right to expect considerable in a wife. Egad! I must be getting married while I am still a young man."
He had been a young man for a good many years, and so entitled to call himself such.
Hugh Parkinson was fastidious, however, and he had never met the one he wanted to marry till he saw Rose Beaufort. Rose was about half his age, and her fresh beauty touched the heart—such as he had—of the old young man.