"Very well. When do you want the money?"
"This morning."
"I don't know about that. However, I will see Mr. Aiken immediately."
"Shall I wait here for you?"
"You may do so, or I will call at your house."
"Do that, if you please."
"Very well. In an hour, at most, I will see you."
The two ladies then parted.
When Mr. Brainard left his house that morning, he felt wretched. Where—how was he to get four hundred dollars? To go to the party from whom he had bought the piano, and confess that he was not able to pay for it, had in it something so humiliating, that he could not bear the thought for a moment. But if the note was not paid,—what then? Might not the instrument be demanded? And how could he give it up now? Or, worse, might it not be seized under execution?
"Oh, that I had never bought it!" he at length exclaimed, mentally, in the bitterness of his feelings. And then he half chid himself for the extorted declaration.