“Number one ninety-nine West Thirty-fourth Street. Well, good-by. I am glad to have met you. Sometime you may be an artist.”
Chester flushed with pride, and a new hope rose in his breast. He had always enjoyed drawing, but no one had ever encouraged him in it. Even his mother thought of it only as a pleasant diversion for him. As to its bringing him in money, the idea had never occurred to him.
It seemed wonderful, indeed, that a little sketch, the work of half an hour, should bring ten dollars. Why compare with this the hours of toil in a grocery store—seventy, at least—which had been necessary to earn the small sum of three dollars. For the first time Chester began to understand the difference between manual and intelligent labor.
It was ten o’clock when Chester left the minister’s house—a late hour in Wyncombe—and he had nearly reached his own modest home before he met anyone. Then he overtook a man of perhaps thirty, thinly clad and shivering in the bitter, wintry wind. He was a stranger, evidently, for Chester knew everyone in the village, and he was tempted to look back. The young man, encouraged perhaps by this evidence of interest, spoke, hurriedly:
“Do you know,” he asked, “where I can get a bed for the night?”
“Mr. Tripp has a few rooms that he lets to strangers. He is the storekeeper.”
The young man laughed, but there was no merriment in the laugh.
“Oh, yes. I know Silas Tripp,” he said.
“Then you have been in Wyncombe before?”
“I never lived here, but I know Silas Tripp better than I want to. He is my uncle.”