"Don't tease the boy, Winny dear," said the little gentle mother; then she turned her kind, interested eyes on him, and waited for his explanation.
"The fact is, I want to get Pliny away from home," he said, anxiously. "You have no idea of the temptations that constantly beset him there. I don't think it is possible for him to sit down to his father's table at any time without being beset by what the poor fellow calls his imps."
"What a world it is, to be sure," sighed Grandma McPherson, "when a boy's worst enemy is his own father. Well, deary, I'm ready to help you fight the old serpent to the very last, and so I am sure is Winny. What is your plan?"
"He thinks of coming into the store—he can have poor Winter's place for the present. At least, Mr. Stephens has made him that offer. He seems to feel the necessity of doing something, if for no other purpose than to use up his time."
Winny glanced up quickly. "Is that all his splendid collegiate education is going to amount to?" she asked, wonderingly, and possibly with a little touch of scorn in her voice. "A clerk in Mr. Stephens' store! I thought he was going to study law?"
"He has used up his brain-power too thoroughly to have any hope of carrying out these plans—at least at present," answered Theodore, sadly. "But, after all, I think we may consider his life not quite a failure, if he should become such a man as Mr. Stephens. Well, grandma, my plan is, that he could room with me, and so make you no extra work in that direction, and, if you could manage the other part, I believe it would be a blessed thing for Pliny."
"Oh, we can manage that all nicely! Can't we, Winny dear? You are willing to try it, I know!"
"Oh, certainly, mother—anything to be on the popular side—only I think we might hang out a sign, and have the advantage of a little notoriety in the matter."
There was this alleviating circumstance connected with Winny: She didn't mean a single one of the sharp and rather unsympathetic things that she said—and those that met her daily had come to understand this and interpret her accordingly. So Theodore arose from the table, greatly relieved in mind, and not a little gratified, that daughter, as well as mother, was willing to co-operate with him. Thus it was that Pliny found himself domiciled that very evening in Theodore's gem of a room—his favorite books piled with Theodore's on the table, his dressing-case standing beside Theodore's on the toilet-table opposite.
"This is jolly!" he said, eagerly, surveying with satisfied eye all the neat appointments of the room, when at last everything had been arranged in accordance with his fastidious taste.