“Not if there was anything else.”
“Ah, that's the great curse of it; that's what I deplore,” Sewell broke out, “in our young people coming from the country to the city. They must all have some genteel occupation! I don't blame them; but I would gladly have saved you this experience—this knowledge—if I could. I felt that I had done you a kind of wrong in being the means, however indirectly and innocently, of your coming to Boston, and I would willingly have done anything to have you go back to the country. But you seemed to distrust me—to find something hostile in me—and I did not know how to influence you.”
“Yes, I understand that,” said Lemuel. “I couldn't help it, at first. But I've got to see it all in a different light since then. I know that you meant the best by me. I know now that what I wrote wasn't worth anything, and just how you must have looked at it. I didn't know some things then that I do now; and since I have got to know a little more I have understood better what you meant by all you said.”
“I am very glad,” said Sewell, with sincere humility, “that you have kept no hard feeling against me.”
“Oh, not at all. It's all right now. I couldn't explain very well that I hadn't come to the city just to be in the city, but because I had to do something to help along at home. You didn't seem to understand that there wa'n't anything there for me to take hold of.”
“No, I'm afraid I didn't, or wouldn't quite understand that; I was talking and acting, I'm afraid, from a preconceived notion.” Lemuel made no reply, not having learned yet to utter the pleasant generalities with which city people left a subject; and after a while Sewell added, “I am glad to have seen your face so often at church. You have been a great deal in my mind, and I have wished to do something to make your life happy, and useful to you in the best way, here, but I haven't quite known how.” At this point Sewell realised that it was nearly eight months since Lemuel had come to Boston, and he said contritely, “I have not made the proper effort, I'm afraid; but I did not know exactly how to approach you. You were rather a difficult subject,” he continued, with a smile in which Lemuel consented to join, “but now that we've come to a clearer understanding—” He broke off and asked, “Have you many acquaintances in Boston?”
Lemuel hesitated, and cleared his throat, “Not many.”
Something in his manner prompted the minister to say, “That is such a very important thing for young men in a strange place. I wish you would come oftener to see us, hereafter. Young men, in the want of companionship, often form disadvantageous acquaintances, which they can't shake off afterwards, when they might wish to do so. I don't mean evil acquaintance; I certainly couldn't mean that in your case; but frivolous ones, from which nothing high or noble can come—nothing of improvement or development.”
Lemuel started at the word and blushed. It was Berry's word. Sewell put his own construction on the start and the blush.
“Especially,” he went on, “I should wish any young man whom I was interested in to know refined and noble woman.” He felt that this was perhaps in Lemuel's case too much like prescribing port wine and carriage exercise to an indigent patient, and he added, “If you cannot know such women, it is better to know none at all. It is not what women say or do, so much as the art they have of inspiring a man to make the best of himself. The accidental acquaintances that young people are so apt to form are in most cases very detrimental. There is no harm in them of themselves, perhaps, but all irregularity in the life of the young is to be deplored.”