y bit of any man! You
know him.'

'Yes,' he said; 'we've had many a rough day together. About the time his
father got into trouble, my father did more than one good turn for him.
But that's neither here nor there.'

'Yes, it is,' said Paul, quickly; 'if your father helped his father,
it's a token that you will help him.'

Scheffer was not so clear on that point: his reply might have chilled
Paul's enthusiasm, could anything have done that.

'I can tell you what, Mitchell,' he said, 'I don't wonder at Cromwell,
and I don't blame him. I believe it's better to go hungry on your own
earnings than full fed at another man's expense. One can starve at home
with a better grace than he can among strangers. That's my mind. It
mayn't be his.'

'It's mine, though,' said Paul. 'If I had the money--if I had a hundred
dollars, I should insist on his taking them. I wish my mother had put me
to a trade: it's all nonsense, this slaving for the sake of
position--what you call it.'

'Don't talk so,' said Scheffer. 'If Harry Cromwell wants anything of me,
I should be ashamed of him if he wouldn't ask it. As to wishing that you
had a trade, if there's a mechanical turn in you, you'll twist into it
yet. But I don't believe there is. Go on as you have begun. It will all
come out right.'

Paul scanned the fine face of the speaker in a spirit of inquiry
unguessed of August. He was thinking of Josephine, and of her words.
Then he said, 'So you always say. But I can't see it. If I could, then
I'd be a philosopher like you. Do you mean I should speak to Harry?'

Scheffer hesitated.

'I see him every day,' said he. 'Sometimes he comes in here. Don't you
think he would be better pleased if it should happen of itself, you
know--not as if we had talked over his affairs. He is such a proud
fellow.'

Paul readily acceded to this plan. He told Josephine what he had done,
and she worked on with a lighter heart. She was thinking of Scheffer.
How slowly he had grown up into her sight again! Man and woman, if they
looked at each other now, must it be across a great gulf? What had
education done for her! Could she thank the teaching that had brought
her to see in her womanhood something beyond the reach of a man like
Scheffer? Could she thank the culture that gave her a position for which
nature and habits like his were all unfit? This maturity seemed
unnatural to the heart of that remembered childhood, which, in its
brave, loving generosity, cou