"I'm well enough," said Jasper abruptly. "Tell sister Marian I will write her very soon," pulling out his watch; "good-by," and he was lost in the crowd surging down Broadway. Mr. Whitney standing still a moment to look after him, turned, and went directly to his office.
"That call on Hendryx & Co. can wait," he muttered to himself on the way, "but Jasper can't. The boy looks badly, and his father ought to know it; although it seems funny enough for me to be meddling with Jasper's affairs. But I won't leave anything to worry about afterward; they can't say I ought to have told them."
So a letter went out by next mail from Mr. Whitney's office, saying that Jasper looked poorly enough when he was met in New York; that he seemed incapable of breathing any other air than that saturated with business; that he had evidently mistaken his vocation when he chose to be a publisher. "Beside, there isn't any money now in the publishing business," added Mr. Whitney as a clincher; "there are too many of the fellows cutting each other's throats to make it pay; and books are slaughtered right and left, and Jasper much better get into some other business, in my opinion."
Meanwhile Jasper finished, to the letter, the instructions for Jacob Bendel, did up the other matters entrusted to him, and set out on his Troy expedition. Here he was detained a day or two, Mr. Marlowe's instructions being to wait over and telegraph if the business could not be adjusted satisfactorily. But the fourth day after leaving home, Jasper, just from the night express, mounted the stairs to his hotel in the early morning, his bag in his hand, and the expression on his face of a man who has accomplished what he set out to do.
"There's an old gent up in your room," announced Buttons, tumbling off, a sleepy heap, from one of the office chairs, to look at him.
"An old gentleman in my room," repeated Jasper, turning on the stairs.
"Why was any person put in my room?"
"We didn't put the person there," said the boy, yawning fearfully, "he put himself there. He's a tiger, he is, and he blows me up reg'lar 'cause you ain't home," he added.
Jasper scaled the rest of the stairs, and tried the knob of his door with no gentle hand. Then he rapped loudly. "Open the door—this is my room."
"Oh! I'm coming," said a voice he knew quite well, and presently old Mr. King stood before him, his velvet cap and morning jacket both awry from impatient fingers.
[Illustration: "AN OLD GENTLEMAN IN MY ROOM," REPEATED JASPER, TURNING
ON THE STAIRS.]