"
"Oh!" said Sewell, pretending to arrange the things on his desk.
"Evans had been suggesting the subject for a sermon." He paused a
moment, and then he continued hardily, "And he'd been telling me
about--Barker. He's turned up again."
"Of course!" said Mrs. Sewell. "What's happened to him now?"
"Nothing, apparently, but some repeated strokes of prosperity. He
has become clerk, elevator-boy, and head-waiter at the St. Albans."
"And what are you going to do about him?"
"Evans advises me to do nothing."
"Well, that's sensible, at any rate," said Mrs. Sewell. "I really
think you've done quite enough, David, and now he can be left to
manage for himself, especially as he seems to be doing well."
"Oh, he's doing as well as I could hope, and better. But I'm not
sure that I shouldn't have personally preferred a continued course
of calamity for him. I shall never be quite at peace about him till
I get him back on his farm at Willoughby Pastures."
"Well, that you will never do; and you may as well rest easy about
it."
"I don't know as to never doing it," said Sewell. "All prosperity,
especially the prosperity connected with Mrs. Harmon's hotel, is
transitory; and I may succeed yet."
"Does everything go on there in the old way, does Mr. Evans say?"
Mrs. Sewell did not refer to any former knowledge of the St.
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