“Yes, sir,” said Harry, in answer to the Colonel's question, and still standing; “I heard that you wanted a clerk, and I should be very grateful if you would let me see if I could fill the place.”
“What is your name?”
“Harry Starlight Avery, if you wish it in full, sir.”
“Will you be seated, Mr. Avery?” said the Colonel, with his habitual kindly courtesy; whereupon John Thomas flourished a bedraggled feather brush over a dusty chair—the same one upon which Hazel had sat during her recent important interview—and placed it near the Colonel's, with all the importance of a drum-major on parade.
“I have heard the name of Starlight before,” Colonel Hamilton said thoughtfully, “but where I cannot remember.” Then, and as though he had no time to devote to mere rumination at that hour of the morning, he asked, “Are you a native of New York, Mr. Avery?”
“No, sir; my home is in New London.”
“Then you are a long ways from it now” (for distances were distances in those days); “how does that happen?”
“I enlisted on a privateer,” Harry answered, coloring slightly.
“So that is how,” and the Colonel gave him the benefit of another scrutinizing look.
“Have you ever had a position in a lawyer's office?”