“Then there’s the more reason for being good to you,” she said.
Little Minna immediately dragged him off to see her garden, which was the disorderly patch which usually satisfied children, and then they all went in to breakfast.
After breakfast Mr. Laurison and Brydell had a business talk. Mr. Laurison agreed to keep him a month on trial and to pay him ten dollars besides his board. If he was satisfactory, he could keep the place indefinitely.
Brydell never was so thankful and so relieved in his life, except when he got that dispatch from Admiral Beaumont.
How much better was this wholesome country life than that dreary search for employment in a city! And he had a good room to sleep in, instead of a box on the top floor in a city boarding-house, and country milk and butter and vegetables to eat—Brydell had an astonishing appetite—and his work, although hard, was nothing like as hard as being perched upon an office stool ten hours a day.
He had to buy himself some working clothes, but, as one result of his training as a gentleman, Brydell never appeared at the table without being neatly dressed. This worked a much-needed reform in Mr. Laurison, who before Brydell came had no scruples about appearing at the dinner table in his shirt sleeves. But he could not afford to be less well dressed than his young hired hand and he began to take more pains with his daily toilet.
This pleased Mrs. Laurison very much, who like most women attached importance to the refinements of life, and who felt hurt to think that though her husband put on his coat when they had guests to dinner, he left it off when they were alone.
At the end of the month Mr. Laurison said nothing about Brydell’s leaving and was secretly rather afraid that Brydell had got tired of his job. But not so; Brydell had a great fund of sound sense, after all the nonsense had been knocked out of him, and he knew he was in good luck to have such a means of livelihood.
As soon as he felt any certainty about his position, he wrote a number of letters—to his father, to Admiral Beaumont, to his Aunt Emeline, and to Grubb the marine, who had got transferred to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
He got very prompt answers from the three of his correspondents who could communicate with him. His Aunt Emeline wrote, saying if he wouldn’t come back, she couldn’t help it—but there was nothing urgent in her invitation. Brydell smiled rather bitterly as he laid the letter down.