“I suppose I shall have to do it myself,” he remarked to Mr. St. George.
“Do what, sir?”
“Send for that young fellow back, and let them set up in some little homestead near me. I mean Brook.”
“Brook!” stammered St. George.
“Here’s Ellin beginning to fade and wither. It’s all very well for her aunt to talk about the heat! I know. She is pining after him, and I can’t see her do it; so he must come home.”
Of all the queer shades that can be displayed by the human countenance, about the queerest appeared in that of Mr. St. George. It was not purple, it was not green, it was not yellow; it was a mixture of all three. He gazed at his chief and master as one gazes at a madman.
“Brook can come into the office again,” continued Mr. Delorane. “I don’t like young men to be idle; leads ’em into temptation. We’ll make him head clerk here, next to you, and give him a couple of hundred a-year. If—what’s the matter?”
For the strange look on his manager’s face had caught the eye of Mr. Delorane. St. George drew three or four deep breaths.
“Have you thought of Miss Delorane, sir—of her interests—in planning this?” he presently asked.
“Why, that’s what I do think of; nothing else. You may be sure I shouldn’t think of it for the interest of Brook. All the same, I like the young man, and always shall. The child is moping herself into a bad way. Where shall I be if she should go into a decline like her mother? No, no; she shall marry and have proper interests around her.”