“I believe I must now bid you good morning,” said the lawyer. “I have important business on hand, and have been beguiled already into remaining here too long. Good morning, Miss Helen. I shall take a very early opportunity to call again upon you and your worthy father. You will hear from me before long, Mr. Coleman, in a way that will, I trust, prove satisfactory to you.”
Mr. Sharp bowed his way down stairs, leaving two happy hearts behind him. He, too, was in excellent spirits. As Mr. Ford’s man of business, he would be liberally paid, and no longer be reduced to those shifts to which, in times past, he had been compelled to resort, for the purpose of “getting along.”
Helen lingered a moment after the lawyer departed.
“Now to finish Uncle Zebina’s letter,” said Herbert, briskly. “It will be a letter different from what I anticipated.”
The letter ran as follows:—
“Dear Uncle Zebina: I thank you for your very kind offer, though I shall be unable to accept it. I feel that I shall be happier as an artist, than I could be in any other vocation. I am confident that you will have no difficulty in securing an assistant who will suit you better than I should do. Give my love to aunt Desire. Tell her and all my friends that I hope to see them all at Thanksgiving.
“Your affectionate nephew,
“Herbert Coleman.
“P. S. I have just sold a painting for two hundred dollars, and have an order for another at the same price.”
This letter, it may be remarked, more especially the postscript, made quite a sensation in Herbert’s country home; and Uncle Zebina allowed that perhaps Herbert was doing better, after all, than if he had become a house painter.