"Well," said Pliny, closing the ledger with a heavy sigh, "if we had a local habitation we'd go to it now, wouldn't we?"
"Probably," answered Theodore, drumming on the counter with his fingers. "Where are we going to live, Pliny, anyway?"
"More than I know," was Pliny's gloomy answer. "In the street for all I seem to care just at present."
And then the office door clicked behind them, and Mr. Stephens appeared.
"I thought you were gone, sir," said Pliny, rising in surprise.
"No, I was waiting your movements. Come, young gentlemen, I want you both to come home with me. There is no use in remonstrating, my boy," he added, laying his hand on Theodore's shoulder, as the latter would have spoken. "I have had your and Pliny's rooms ready for you this week past, and have only waited until you were at leisure to take possession. I keep bachelor's hall, you know, and if ever a man needed something new and fresh about him I do. So do as I want you to for once, just to see how it will seem."
There was much talk about the matter, argument and counter argument; but in the end Mr. Stephens prevailed, as in reality he generally did, when he set his heart upon a thing, despite his statements that Theodore kept him under complete control. Before another week closed the two young men were cozily settled in their new quarters, and really feeling as much at home as though half their lives had been spent there.
There was one other matter which came to Theodore as a source of great satisfaction.
"Mallery," Mr. Stephens had said to him one morning when they were quite alone in the private office, "have you any special interest in the Hastings' place?"
Theodore hesitated a little, and then answered frankly enough: