“Yes, and I may have to be absent a month or two, perhaps longer but you must try to make the best of it. Your mother will probably arrive by to-morrow, and I would be glad if she could remain with you until I return,” Earle said, thinking his mother’s influence, and love, and care would be the best guardians he could possibly leave in his absence.
“Thank you, sir,” Tom answered, heartily then, after thinking a moment, he added, wistfully: “I am getting strong and well so fast that I would like to begin to do something, sir. If you could leave me some work I should be glad, and the time would not seem so long.”
Earle thought a moment, and then asked:
“Are you good at accounts?”
“I used to be fair at them. I learned Comer’s method after I went to America, thinking to make a business man of myself.”
“Then if you would take the trouble to straighten out some accounts that got badly mixed during the last year of the old marquis’ life, it would help me wonderfully.”
Tom’s face brightened at once.
“I should like it,” he said, eagerly; and Earle felt better at once about leaving him, knowing that if he felt he was making himself useful, he would be more contented.
The next day found him on board the Ethiopia, bound for New York, and scarcely able to control his impatience, even though the noble steamer, with favorable wind and weather, was plowing the pathless water with unusual speed.
At the end of eight days he stood once more upon American soil, and an hour or two later found him again ascending the steps of Mr. Dalton’s residence.