The Queen of Sheba / My Cousin the Colonel | Page 7

him to your kindness, if I have not
exhausted it.
Your affectionate nephew, J. FLEMMING.
Five or six days after this letter reached Mr. Bowlsby, Mr. Edward
Lynde presented himself in the directors' room of the Nautilus Bank.
The young man's bearing confirmed the favorable impression which Mr.
Bowlsby had derived from his nephew's letter, and though there was
really no vacancy in the bank at the moment, Mr. Bowlsby lent himself
to the illusion that he required a private secretary. A few weeks later a
vacancy occurred unexpectedly, that of paying-teller--a position in
which Lynde acquitted himself with so much quickness and accuracy,
that when Mr. Trefethen, the assistant cashier, died in the December
following, Lynde was promoted to his desk.
The unruffled existence into which Edward Lynde had drifted was
almost the reverse of the career he had mapped out for himself, and it
was a matter of mild astonishment to him at intervals that he was not
discontented. He thought Rivermouth one of the most charming old
spots he had ever seen or heard of, and the people the most hospitable.
The story of his little family jar, taking deeper colors and richer
ornamentation as it passed from hand to hand, made him at once a
social success. Mr. Goldstone, one of the leading directors of the bank,

invited Lynde to dinner--few persons were ever overburdened with
invitations to dine at the Goldstones'--and the door of many a refined
home turned willingly on its hinges for the young man. At the evening
parties, that winter, Edward Lynde was considered almost as good a
card as a naval officer. Miss Mildred Bowlsby, then the reigning belle,
was ready to flirt with him to the brink of the Episcopal marriage
service, and beyond; but the phenomenal honeymoon which had
recently quartered in Lynde's family left him indisposed to take any
lunar observations on his own account.
With his salary as cashier, Lynde's income was Vanderbiltish for a
young man in Rivermouth. Unlike his great contemporary, he did not
let it accumulate. Once a month he wrote a dutiful letter to his uncle
David, who never failed to answer by telegraph, "Yours received. God
bless you, Edward." This whimsical fashion of reply puzzled young
Lynde quite as much as it diverted him until he learned (through his
friend, John Flemming) that his aunt Vivien had extorted from the old
gentleman a solemn promise not to write to his nephew.
Lynde's duties at the bank left him free every afternoon at four o'clock;
his work and his leisure were equally pleasant. In summer he kept a
sail-boat on the river, and in winter he had the range of a rich collection
of books connected with an antiquated public reading-room. Thus very
happily, if very quietly, and almost imperceptibly the months rolled
round to that period when the Nautilus Bank gave Edward Lynde a
three weeks' vacation, and he set forth, as we have seen, on Deacon
Twombly's mare, in search of the picturesque and the peculiar, if they
were to be found in the northern part of New Hampshire.

III
IN WHICH MARY TAKES A NEW DEPARTURE
It was still dark enough the next morning to allow the great chimneys
to show off their colored fires effectively, when Lynde passed through
the dingy main street of K---and struck into a road which led to the hill

country. A short distance beyond the town, while he was turning in the
saddle to observe the singular effect of the lurid light upon the
landscape, a freight-train shot obliquely across the road within five rods
of his horse's head, the engine flinging great flakes of fiery spume from
its nostrils, and shrieking like a maniac as it plunged into a tunnel
through a spur of the hills. Mary went sideways, like a crab, for the
next three quarters of a mile.
To most young men the expedition which Edward Lynde had
undertaken would have seemed unattractive and monotonous to the last
degree; but Lynde's somewhat sedentary habits had made him familiar
with his own company. When one is young and well read and amiable,
there is really no better company than one's self--as a steady thing. We
are in a desperate strait indeed if we chance at any age to tire of this
invisible but ever- present comrade; for he is not to be thrown over
during life. Before now, men have become so weary of him, so bored
by him, that they have attempted to escape, by suicide; but it is a
question if death itself altogether rids us of him.
In no minute of the twenty-four hours since Lynde left Rivermouth had
he felt the want of other companionship. Mary, with her peculiarities,
the roadside sights and sounds, the chubby children with shining