"Yes, I believe so. What do you know about him?" asked the lady in surprise.
"I have engaged him as errand boy."
"You have! What for?" exclaimed Mrs. Pitkin.
"I couldn't help it. He brought a letter from your uncle, requesting me to do so, and offering to pay his wages out of his own pocket."
"This is really getting very serious," said Mrs.
Pitkin, annoyed. "Suppose he should take a fancy to this boy?"
"He appears to have done so already," said her husband dryly.
"I mean, suppose he should adopt him?"
"You are getting on pretty fast, Lavinia, are you not?"
"Such things happen sometimes," said the lady, nodding. "If it should happen it would be bad for poor Lonny."
"Even in that case Lonny won't have to go to the poor-house."
"Mr. Pitkin, you don't realize the danger. Here's Uncle Oliver worth a quarter of a million dollars, and it ought to be left to us."
"Probably it will be."
"He may leave it all to this boy. This must be prevented."
"How?"
"You must say the boy doesn't suit you, and discharge him."
"Well, well, give me time. I have no objection; but I suspect it will be hard to find any fault with him. He looks like a reliable boy."
"To me he looks like an artful young adventurer," said Mrs. Pitkin vehemently. "Depend upon it, Mr. Pitkin, he will spare no pains to ingratiate himself into Uncle Oliver's favor."
It will be seen that Mrs. Pitkin was gifted--if it can be called a gift--with a very suspicious temperament.
She was mean and grasping, and could not bear the idea of even a small part of her uncle's money going to any one except her own family.
There was, indeed, another whose relationship to Uncle Oliver was as close--a cousin, who had estranged her relatives by marrying a poor bookkeeper, with whom she had gone to Milwaukee.
Her name was never mentioned in the Pitkin household, and Mrs. Pitkin, trusting to the distance between them, did not apprehend any danger from this source. Had she known Rebecca Forbush was even now in New York, a widow with one child, struggling to make a living by sewing and taking lodgers, she would have felt less tranquil. But she knew nothing of all this, nor did she dream that the boy whom she dreaded was the very next day to make the acquaintance of this despised relation.
This was the way that it happened:
Phil soon tired of the room he had taken in Fifth Street. It was not neatly kept, and was far from comfortable. Then again, he found that the restaurants, cheap as they were, were likely to absorb about all his salary, though the bill-of-fare was far from attractive.
Chance took him through a side-street, between Second and Third Avenues, in the neighborhood of Thirteenth Street.
Among the three and four-story buildings that lined the block was one frame-house, two-story-and-basement, on which he saw a sign, "Board for Gentlemen." He had seen other similar signs, but his attention was specially drawn to this by seeing a pleasant-looking woman enter the house with the air of proprietor. This woman recalled to Philip his own mother, to whom she bore a striking resemblance.
"I would like to board with one whose face recalled that of my dear dead mother," thought Phil, and on the impulse of the moment, just after the woman had entered, he rang the door-bell.
The door was opened almost immediately by the woman he had just seen enter.
It seemed to Phil almost as if he were looking into his mother's face, and he inquired in an unsteady voice:
"Do you take boarders?"
"Yes," was the answer. "Won't you step in?"
