ess. "I've offered this youngster a place in my firm," he
explained to Doctor Lavendar, who said:

"Have you, indeed?"

"No," Johnny said, "it doesn't mean Carey and Robertson, though you're
mighty kind, Mr. Robertson. But you see I can't leave Old Chester. It
would pull Aunt Lydia up by the roots to go away. And of course I
couldn't go without her."

Mary's plump hand, with its shining rings, clenched sharply on the
tablecloth; she drew in her breath, but she said nothing.

"Well, what are you going to do?" Carl said, not daring to meet his
wife's eyes.

"Aunt Lydia got a job for me in Mr. Dilworth's hardware store."

His mother cried out--then checked herself. "Miss Lydia ought not to
have thought of such a thing!" she tried to speak quietly, but she had
to bite her lip to keep it steady.

"Mary!" her husband warned her.

John's face darkened. "Aunty ought always to do whatever she does do,"
he said.

"Of course," his father agreed, soothingly.

"I only meant," Mary explained, in a frightened voice, "that a hardware
store isn't much of a chance for a man like you."

"It means staying in Old Chester with Aunty," he explained; "she's not
very well now, Mrs. Robertson," he said, and sighed; "it would be too
much for her, to move. She's not equal to it." His strong, rather harsh
face softened and sobered. "And as for a hardware store not being a
chance for _me_--I mean to make Rome howl with a Mercer branch! You see,
Aunty bought a half-interest for me. The Lord knows where she got the
money! Saved it out of her food all these years, I guess."

"She didn't, apparently, save it out of your food," Doctor Lavendar
said, dryly; "I believe you weigh two hundred, Johnny."

"Only a hundred and eighty-four," the young man assured him.

Mary, listening, was tingling all over; she had planned a very cautious
approach to the truth which was to give her son back to her. She meant
first to hint, and then to admit, and then to declare her _right_ to his
love. But that Miss Lydia, without consulting Johnny's father and
mother, should have put him into such a business--"_my son_ in a
hardware store!" Mary thought;--that Miss Lydia should have dared! "He's
mine--he's mine--he's mine! . . . Of course," she was saying to herself
as they went back to the library after dinner--"of course, he'll give it
up the minute he knows who he is. But I hate her!"

The room, in the September dusk, was lighted only by a lamp on the big