getic she helps
one to new life. There may be prettier and more prosperous places, and
you have years before you in which to realize a fortune."

He glanced up at the face bending over him, instinct with the honorable
grace of middle life; the hair with a few threads of silver; the soft,
fine skin showing some wrinkles about the eyes and two or three light
creases across the forehead; the cheeks out of which roundness had
vanished, and the lips the scarlet of girlhood, but though both were
pale the mouth was still tender and sweet. A womanly woman,--that seemed
to him a perfect description of his mother, a woman who had loved three
generations, and held by them. Now for his sake she would give up the
old ties, and try a new world,--this shy, shrinking, loving woman.

What would she leave? She had never known any other home in her married
life, though this had been changed and improved since her wedding-day.
Everywhere some trace of his father. The porch with the roses climbing
over it, the great maples in the street, planted by him; the odorous old
balm of Gilead, that he had hunted up because she had cared for it, and
they had one in her old home; the trailing clematis with its shining
smilax-like green, and its heliotrope fragrance; the white rose that had
been planted on the morning of Jack's birth, and had sent up many
generations from the old root; the latticed summer-house with its wealth
of grapes; and almost like a vision Jack could fancy he saw the tall
figure and deliberate step,--the sweet ghost of memory that could never
walk in any other place. Did his mother have such dreams?

Yes, there were better things to life than mere money-getting.

"I believe those were the wild dreams of boyhood,"--smiling a
little,--"the 'long, long thoughts of youth.' I used to want something
that would occupy my whole soul and every energy, that was stirring,
earnest, absorbing, and held a grand outlook. But I think"--very
deliberately, as if he were weighing every word--"that my work has come
to me, instead of my going out to seek it. At all events, I shall not go
away for the present."

"Well," she returned, but she could not keep the great gladness out of
her voice.

Having thus made his election, Jack Darcy looked sturdily about to see
what was to be done, and the best way to do it. He asked two of the old
over-lookers, Hurd and Bradley, to meet him at Maverick's office; and
there they discussed co-operation until lon