CHAPTER XVI.—COLONEL HAMILTON “TAKES TO” HARRY.
RIGHT and early on the Monday succeeding the Van Vleet tea-party, Harry Starlight set out for his call upon Colonel Hamilton. It proved to be a clear, bracing morning, the kind of a morning to inspire hope in hearts five times as old as Harry's, only fortunately there are some hearts that never grow old at all, and to whom hope is just as true and beautiful-at sixty as sixteen. The moment he closed the door of the kitchen behind him, he drew one great, deep breath, as though longing to take in, in a permanent way if possible, all the exhilaration of the invigorating air, all the marvellous beauty of the wonderful out-of-door world. There had been a heavy frost the night before, but almost the first flash of sunrise had transformed it into an army of glistening drops, save where here and there, under the protecting chill of sombre shadows, the grass-blades still were cased in sheaths of crystal. The river was gray and white-capped, for the west wind would not leave it still enough to reflect the cloudless blue overhead, and the “Gretchen” tugged at her chain with various little creaks and groans, as though an anchor and a furled sail were more than sail-boat nature could endure when such a breeze was blowing. Indeed, as Harry freed her from her moorings, she fairly seemed to bound out into the river with the keen enjoyment of a creature alive in every part. It is hard to picture that East River as it looked a hundred years ago, with wooded and grass-grown banks in place of wharves and warehouses, and with only an occasional sail, where to-day the great, unwieldy ferry-boats plow from shore to shore, and an army of smaller craft steam noisily hither and thither. Now and then Harry would pass a market-boat loaded to the water's edge with a tempting array of vegetables, and rowed by a marketwoman in her close-fitting Dutch cap, who would either wish him a cheery good-morning in matronly fashion, or bend lower over her oars, as became a young maiden. Half reluctantly did Harry hear the “Gretchen's” keel scrape the pebbly shore, and exchange the breezy breadth of the river for the city street, notwithstanding that street led straight up to Colonel Hamilton's office. Then, somehow or other, he did not feel quite so buoyant as at the start, for hope has a trick of wavering a little, as she actually nears the verge of any decision. What if some one had already secured the place? What if the Colonel should not take to him? for Harry had great faith in and great respect for what may be called “taking to people.”