'Why, bless me, Mr. Kirke, is that you?' exclaimed a much younger man, springing from his seat near the other, and grasping me by both hands. 'What has brought you to Boston?'
'Business, Frank. I've just arrived, and go back to-morrow. Come! my wife is in the carriage at the door, and wants you to spend the evening with us.'
'I can't—I'm very sorry,' and he added, in a lower tone, 'she has just heard of her father's death, and goes home to-morrow. I have engaged to pass the evening with her.'
'Her father dead! how was it?'
'He was thrown from his horse, and died the same day. She knew nothing of it till yesterday. I can not neglect her now. I will spend to-morrow with mother.'
He always called her mother, though he was not her son. He had done it when a child, and now that he was a man, hers was the dearest name he knew. He loved her as his mother, and she loved him as her son. But any woman might have loved him. His straight, closely-knit, sinewy frame, dark, deep-set eyes, and broad, open forehead, overhung with thick, brown hair, were only the outshadowing of a beautiful mind, of an open, upright, manly nature, whose firm and steady integrity nothing could shake.
'I'm sorry to hear it,' I replied; 'but go down and see her, while I speak to Mr. Hallet.'
Rapping at the door of an inner office, separated from the outer one by a ground-glass partition, I was admitted by a tall, dark man, who, with a stiff and slightly embarrassed manner, said to me:
'I am glad to see you, Mr. Kirke. Pray, be seated.'
As he pointed to a chair, a shorter and younger gentleman, who was writing at another desk, rose, and slapping me familiarly on the back, exclaimed: