It should have been a memorable day for Matthew Broffin when he had this sick man pointed out to him as Miss Grierson's companion in the high trap--which was also one of Miss Margery's bids for criticism in a town where the family carryall was still a feature. But Broffin was sufficiently human to see only a very beautiful young woman sitting correctly erect on the slanting driving-seat and holding the reins over a high-stepping horse which, he was told, had cost Jasper Grierson every cent of a thousand dollars. To be sure, he saw the man, as one sees a vanishing figure in a kaleidoscope. But there was nothing in the clean-shaven face of the gaunt, and as yet rather haggard, convalescent to evoke the faintest thrill of interest--or of memory.
A week and a day after the opening of new vistas at Miss Grierson's "evening," Griswold--Raymer's intercession with the Widow Holcomb having paved the way--took a favorable opportunity of announcing his intention of leaving Mereside. It figured as a grateful disappointment to him--one of the many she was constantly giving him--that Margery placed no obstacles in the way of the intention. On the contrary, she approved the plan.
"I know how you feel," she said, nodding complete comprehension. "You want to have a place that you can call your own; a place where you can go and come as you please and settle down to work. You _are_ going to work, aren't you?--on the book, I mean?"
Griswold replaced in its proper niche the volume he had been reading. It was Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, and he had been wondering by what ironical chance it had found a place in the banker's library.
"Yes; that is what I mean to do," he returned. "But it will have to be done in such scraps and parings of time as I can save from some bread-and-butter occupation. One must eat to live, you know."
She was sitting on the arm of one of the big library lounging-chairs and looking up at him with a smile that was suspiciously innocent and childlike.
"You mean that you will have to work for your living?" she asked.
"I don't know," he confessed. "I have been hoping that Raymer might help me to find a place; possibly in the machine works as an under bookkeeper, or something of that sort. Not that I know very much about any really useful occupation, when it comes to that; but I suppose I can learn."