“On the contrary,” said Myles, “they have dismissed me from the paper.”
“Dismissed you? Impossible!”
“They did not find it so,” replied Myles; “but, to tell the truth, I was not dismissed for what I did, but rather for what I did not do.”
“I am extremely sorry to hear it,” said the old gentleman; “extremely sorry; but let us have dinner first, and talk it all over afterward; things always look so much brighter after dinner than they do before it.”
At the dinner-table Myles was in the very act of raising a glass of wine to his lips when his promise to Kate darted into his mind. With a flushed face he set the glass quickly down, saying, in answer to his companion’s inquiring look, “I took a pledge to-day, sir, never again to touch a drop of wine, and so you will please excuse me for not breaking it.”
“Excuse you for not breaking it! My dear boy, I would never excuse you if you did. It was a fine thing to do, and may you have the strength to stick to that pledge through life! No young man can have a better recommendation, when seeking to make his way in the world, than that he is strictly temperate. I even place it ahead of a character for honesty among my employés.”
“Do you, then, employ many men, sir?” asked Myles, with a vague hope that something might come to him through this interview.
“Well, yes, a thousand or two, more or less,” replied the other, laughing, “but not exactly in your line of business.”
“I don’t know that I have any line of business just at present,” said Myles; and this brought them back to the subject of his dismissal from the paper. The old gentleman asked such shrewd questions, and expressed such genuine interest and sympathy, that, before he knew it, Myles was telling him the whole story exactly as he had told it to Kate.