more. Five years is a long while when
you count the days," and he smiled.

"You will succeed, I know. You have just that mastery over every thing."

Jack finally persuaded Fred to come down to the well-remembered cottage,
and see his mother. Mrs. Darcy would have welcomed her bitterest enemy
if Jack had desired her to.

All this time Jack was thinking whether he could do his old friend a
good turn. He hated to offer him any subordinate position in the mill.
At present he could attend to the book-keeping. Then he heard there was
to be a change at the paper-mills, and went over. They wanted a clerk
and foreman, one with taste enough to select pretty designs, and who
could keep books.

"I do not know as you would like it, Fred," he continued with some
hesitation in his cheery tones.

"I have been a dawdler long enough, and I have had a bitter experience
in finding _any thing_ to do. I shall be glad to take it, and you may
believe I will try my best. Many, many thanks for your kind interest."

There had been a sharp, short struggle in Fred's soul. He would rather
have gone elsewhere, where he was not known. But if fate had resolved to
bring him back to Yerbury, if she had offered him bread here, while it
had been stones elsewhere, he would certainly be a fool to starve for
pride's sake. Some wholesome ideas had found lodgement in his brain,
along with the Greek myths and synthetic philosophies. If he could not
astonish the world with brilliant reasoning, he might at least get his
own living.

He went back to the city, and discussed the project with his mother and
Irene. She had a tender longing for her son: to be with him would afford
her greater satisfaction than the magnificence of her daughter's house.
Irene consented stonily. It was burying herself alive, but then no one
would torment her with hateful marriages. To stay here with Agatha was
simply unendurable.

Mrs. Minor made no further comment than to say she did not think her
mother could be kept as comfortable. Irene was her own mistress.

So Fred Lawrence went back to Yerbury and work. It was an altogether new
undertaking. He had no business training and no experience, except his
desultory two months in Bristol's office. Yet from the very first day
there was something that interested him here, although for awhile the
smells, the dust and disorder, half sickened him. As for any wound to
his pride, he felt that less because the whole world seemed to have
t