pproval.

CHAPTER XXIII

JACK OBTAINS INFORMATION

Jack set out with that lightness of heart and keen sense of enjoyment
that seem natural to a young man of eighteen on his first journey.
Partly by boat, partly by cars, he traveled, till in a few hours he was
discharged, with hundreds of others, at the depot in Philadelphia.

He rejected all invitations to ride, and strode on, carpetbag in hand,
though, sooth to say, he had very little idea whether he was steering in
the right direction for his uncle's shop. By dint of diligent and
persevering inquiry he found it at last, and walking in, announced
himself to the worthy baker as his nephew Jack.

"What? Are you Jack?" exclaimed Mr. Abel Harding, pausing in his labor.
"Well, I never should have known you, that's a fact. Bless me, how
you've grown! Why, you're 'most as big as your father, ain't you?"

"Only half an inch shorter," answered Jack, complacently.

"And you're--let me see--how old are you?"

"Eighteen; that is, almost. I shall be in two months."

"Well, I'm glad to see you, Jack, though I hadn't the least idea of your
raining down so unexpectedly. How's your father and mother and your
adopted sister?"

"Father and mother are pretty well," answered Jack; "and so is Aunt
Rachel," he continued, smiling, "though she ain't so cheerful as she
might be."

"Poor Rachel!" said Abel, smiling also. "Everything goes contrary with
her. I don't suppose she's wholly to blame for it. Folks differ
constitutionally. Some are always looking on the bright side of things,
and others can never see but one side, and that's the dark one."

"You've hit it, uncle," said Jack, laughing. "Aunt Rachel always looks
as if she was attending a funeral."

"So she is, my boy," said Abel, gravely, "and a sad funeral it is."

"I don't understand you, uncle."

"The funeral of her affections--that's what I mean. Perhaps you mayn't
know that Rachel was, in early life, engaged to be married to a young
man whom she ardently loved. She was a different woman then from what
she is now. But her lover deserted her just before the wedding was to
have come off, and she's never got over the disappointment. But that
isn't what I was going to talk about. You haven't told me about your
adopted sister."

"That's the very thing I've come to Philadelphia about," said Jack,
soberly. "Ida has been carried off, and I've come in search of her."

"Been carried off? I didn't know such things ev