The Bread-winners | Page 5

rapidly that Farnham could
hardly keep pace with her. As he opened the door she barely
acknowledged his parting salutation, and swept like a huffy goddess
down the steps. Farnham gazed after her a moment, admiring the
undulating line from the small hat to the long and narrow train which
dragged on the smooth stones of the walk. He then returned to the
library. Budsey was mending the fire.
"If you please, sir," he said, "Mrs. Belding's man came over to ask,
would you dine there this evening, quite informal."
"Why didn't he come in?"
"I told him you were engaged."
"Ah, very well. Say to Mrs. Belding that I will come, with pleasure."

II.
A HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATE.
Miss Matchin picked up her train as she reached the gate, picked up her
train as she reached the gate, and walked down the street in a state of
mind by no means tranquil. If she had put her thoughts in words they
would have run like this:
"That was the meanest trick a gentleman ever played. How did he dare
know I wasn't nearsighted? And what a fool I was to be caught by that
photograph--saw it as plain as day three yards off. I had most made up
my mind to leave them off anyway, though they are awful stylish; they
pinch my nose and make my head ache. But I'll wear them now," and
here the white teeth came viciously together, "if they kill me. Why
should he put me down that way? He made me shy for the first time in
my life. It's a man's business to be shy before me. If I could only get
hold of him somehow! I'd pay him well for making me feel so small.
The fact is, I started wrong. I did not really know what I wanted; and
that graven image of an English butler set me back so; and then I never

saw such a house as that. It is sinful for one man to live there all alone.
Powers alive! How well that house would suit my complexion! But I
don't believe I'd take it with him thrown in."
It is doubtful whether young girls of Miss Matchin's kind are ever quite
candid in their soliloquies. It is certain she was not when she assured
herself that she did not know why she went to Farnham's house that
morning. She went primarily to make his acquaintance, with the hope
also that by this means she might be put in some easy and genteel way
of earning money. She was one of a very numerous class in large
American towns. Her father was a carpenter, of a rare sort. He was a
good workman, sober, industrious, and unambitious. He was contented
with his daily work and wage, and would have thanked Heaven if he
could have been assured that his children would fare as well as he. He
was of English blood, and had never seemed to imbibe into his veins
the restless haste and hunger to rise which is the source of much that is
good and most that is evil in American life. In the dreams of his early
married days he created a future for his children, in the image of his
own decent existence. The boys should succeed him in his shop, and
the daughters should go out to service in respectable families. This
thought sweetened his toil. When he got on well enough to build a shop
for himself, he burdened himself with debt, building it firmly and well,
so as to last out his boys' time as well as his own. When he was
employed on the joiner-work of some of those large houses in
Algonquin Avenue, he lost himself in reveries in which he saw his
daughters employed as house-maids in them. He studied the faces and
the words of the proprietors, when they visited the new buildings, to
guess if they would make kind and considerate employers. He put
many an extra stroke of fine work upon the servants' rooms he finished,
thinking: "Who knows but my Mattie may live here sometime?"
But Saul Matchin found, like many others of us, that fate was not so
easily managed. His boys never occupied the old shop on Dean Street,
which was built with so many sacrifices and so much of hopeful love.
One of them ran away from home on the first intimation that he was
expected to learn his father's trade, shipped as a cabin-boy on one of the
lake steamers, and was drowned in a storm which destroyed the vessel.

The other, less defiant or less energetic, entered the shop and attained
some proficiency in the work. But as he grew toward manhood, he
became, as the old man called it,