The Bread-winners | Page 2

will
stand in the Champs Elysees, when all the vice and fashion of Europe
are pouring down from the Place of the Star in the refluent tide that
flows from Boulogne Wood to Paris, and calmly tell you that
"Algonquin Avenue in the sleighing season can discount this out of
sight." Something is to be pardoned to the spirit of liberty; and the
avenue is certainly a fine one. It is three miles long and has hardly a
shabby house in it, while for a mile or two the houses upon one side,
locally called "the Ridge," are unusually line, large, and costly. They
are all surrounded with well-kept gardens and separated from the street

by velvet lawns which need scarcely fear comparison with the emerald
wonders which centuries of care have wrought from the turf of England.
The house of which we have seen one room was one of the best upon
this green and park-like thoroughfare. The gentleman who was sitting
by the fire was Mr. Arthur Farnham. He was the owner and sole
occupant of the large stone house--a widower of some years' standing,
although he was yet young. His parents had died in his childhood. He
had been an officer in the army, had served several years upon the
frontier, had suffered great privations, had married a wife much older
than himself, had seen her die on the Plains from sheer want, though he
had more money than he could get transportation for; and finally, on
the death of his grandfather he had resigned, with reluctance, a
commission which had brought him nothing but suffering and toil, and
had returned to Buffland, where he was born, to take charge of the great
estate of which he was the only heir. And even yet, in the midst of a
luxury and a comfort which anticipated every want and gratified every
taste, he often looked longingly back upon the life he had left, until his
nose inhaled again the scent of the sage-brush and his eyes smarted
with alkali dust. He regretted the desolate prairies, the wide reaches of
barrenness accursed of the Creator, the wild chaos of the mountain
canons, the horror of the Bad Lands, the tingling cold of winter in the
Black Hills. But the Republic holds so high the privilege of serving her
that, for the officer who once resigns--with a good character--there is
no return forever, though he seek it with half the lobby at his heels. So
Captain Farnham sat, this fine May morning, reading a newspaper
which gave the stations of his friends in the "Tenth" with something of
the feeling which assails the exile when he cons the court journal where
his name shall appear no more.
But while he is looking at the clock a servant enters.
"That same young person is here again."
"What young person?"
There was a slight flavor of reproach in the tone of the grave
Englishman as he answered:

"I told you last night, sir, she have been here three times already; she
doesn't give me her name nor yet her business; she is settin' in the
drawin'-room, and says she will wait till you are quite at leisure. I was
about to tell her," he added with still deeper solemnity, "that you were
hout, sir, but she hinterrupted of me and said, 'He isn't gone, there's his
'at,' which I told her you 'ad several 'ats, and would she wait in the
drawin'-room and I'd see."
Captain Farnham smiled.
"Very well, Budsey, you've done your best--and perhaps she won't eat
me after all. Is there a fire in the drawing-room?"
"No, sir."
"Let her come in here, then."
A moment afterward the rustle of a feminine step made Farnham raise
his head suddenly from his paper. It was a quick, elastic step,
accompanied by that crisp rattle of drapery which the close clinging
garments of ladies produced at that season. The door opened, and as the
visitor entered Farnham rose in surprise. He had expected to see the
usual semi-mendicant, with sad-colored raiment and doleful whine,
calling for a subscription for a new "Centennial History," or the
confessed genteel beggar whose rent would be due to-morrow. But
there was nothing in any way usual in the young person who stood
before him. She was a tall and robust girl of eighteen or nineteen, of a
singularly fresh and vigorous beauty. The artists forbid us to look for
physical perfection in real people, but it would have been hard for the
coolest-headed studio-rat to find any fault in the slender but powerful
form of this young woman. Her color was deficient in delicacy, and her
dark hair was too luxuriant to be amenable to the imperfect discipline
to which it had been accustomed; but the eye