“What do you propose doing when you get home?”
“What can I do with thirty dollars, which I left with Peter by-the-way?”
“We shall see what we shall see when we come face to face with Aunt Formica. I intend going the rounds with you in New York. I am a student.”
He carried Osgood to his country-home beyond Liverpool, where they staid till the ship was ready to sail again. He amused his mother and sisters with stories of Osgood’s adventures on sea and land, and represented him in the light of a “Jarley’s wax-works” hero, till he was fairly cured of his melancholy.
Five months from the day on which he left New York Osgood returned, and stood on his Aunt Formica’s door-steps with Dr. Black. They looked like a pair of Englishmen. Both had shiny, red noses, shiny, hard, narrow-brimmed hats, and shiny, narrow-toed boots, and the nap had brushed off their coats.
Osgood looked into the familiar area with emotion, and the Doctor looked at the windows with curiosity.
“They must be out of town,” he said; “the house has been put in brown hollands.”
But Osgood knew the habits of his aunt—knew that from the first of July till the first of October the house was put on an out-of-town footing; and that she skirmished between city and country, or watering-place. The bell was answered by a servant he did not know.
“I wish to see Mrs. Formica,” he said, brushing past her, and entering the dark parlor. “Dr. Black and friend say.”