“And yet, father, all the time they were living at Cobham’s Corner, on the Erie Canal, and I was living with them, not as a boy whose board had ever been paid, but as a friendless slave of never-ending toil,” said Dick, more indignant than ever at the unfair treatment he had experienced at the hands of Silas Maslin and his wife.
“The unfeeling rascal!” exclaimed Mr. Armstrong. “But he and I will have a reckoning that will not tend to his advantage.”
Notwithstanding this new phase of Mr. Maslin’s duplicity, Dick did not fail to give Luke, his wayward son, the necessary money to take him home, when that repentant young man called to see him next morning at Mr. Nesbitt’s offices.
Probably the most excited as well as delighted young fellow in New York next day was Joe Fletcher when his stanch friend and chum told him the news that he had actually found his father—now a millionaire mine-owner.
“I never was so glad at anything in my whole life, Dick, old boy,” he cried, with a beaming face. And then he stopped, and his countenance suddenly clouded. “Perhaps a seven-dollar-a-week produce clerk is hardly a fit companion for the son of the wealthy Mr. Armstrong. It will break my heart to lose you, Dick, but at least it will be a satisfaction to know you’ve reached your proper station.”
“Don’t you talk nonsense, Joe,” said Dick, grasping his hand with a feeling that could not be mistaken. “Chums we’ve been in adversity, and so shall we remain in the days when prosperity has overtaken one of us at least. Glad as I am to recover my father, I am proud to say that, without any help from him and but little in a business sense from even Mr. Nesbitt, I have succeeded in making my way to the front, even if I am only seventeen years old.”
“That’s right,” agreed Joe, fervently.
And there were others who also coincided with this opinion, the Nesbitts, for instance, and Jennie more than her parents, for a few years later she gave her hand where she had long since given her heart—to Dick Armstrong, the BOY WHO SUCCEEDED.
THE END.