“I should be very glad to do so,” I replied. “Did you have any trouble with Colonel Wimpleton?”
“I did. He discharged me, and ordered me out of his house,” he answered, gloomily.
Of one thing I was sure—my father was not angry with me.
CHAPTER XIX.
RICH MEN’S QUARRELS.
My father was himself again. He was clothed in his right mind once more. He even appeared to have forgotten that I had emptied the bottle the day before, and treated me as kindly as though nothing had occurred to mar the unity which had always subsisted between us. My mother seemed to be quite happy, too; and, while I was at work in the garden, she told me she had talked till daylight with him, after his return from Colonel Wimpleton’s. He had bitterly bewailed his error, and solemnly promised not to taste another drop of liquor. He was conscious that he had lost his twenty-four hundred dollars by getting intoxicated, and he had very little hope of ever seeing it again.
More than this, my mother had explained my conduct to him, and he was satisfied with it. The night visit of Waddie, and the colonel’s unreasonable harshness to him, had probably done more to convince him than any words of my mother. He had lost his situation, and had been treated with gross injustice, for the great man would not accept his explanation of the blow he had given his son.
“Wolf,” said my father, after he had granted me permission to accept Major Toppleton’s offer, “I am afraid we shall soon be in trouble all round.”
“I hope not.”
“If I had the money to pay off the mortgage on the house, I should not care so much. As it is, I may lose even the thousand dollars I have paid on it. The colonel will foreclose on me at once, and people here will not dare to bid when it is put up at auction, if he tells them not to do so.”