ew minutes
at noontime (perhaps sacrificing his lunch therefor), to catch old Mr.
Bowdoin at his desk and chat with him (under plea of some omitted
entry needing explanation), and tell him how well David was doing, and
Mercedes so happy, and what company they had had to tea the night
before. So that one day Mr. Bowdoin even ventured to give him a golden
bracelet young Harleston Bowdoin had sent, soon after the wedding,
from France; and Jamie took it without a murmur. "Ah, 'tis a pity,
sir, ye din't keep the old house up, for the sake of the young
gentlemen, if nothing more," said he; and "Ah, Jamie," was Mr.
Bowdoin's reply, "it's all dirty coal-barges now; the old house would
not know its way about in steamers. We'll have to take to banking,
like yourself and Sinclair there."

Jamie laughed with pleasure, and father and son went each to a window
to watch him as he sidled up the street.

"Caroline never would have stood it," said the old man.

"Neither would Abby," said the younger one. "Yet you made me marry
her;" and they both chuckled. It was the habit of the Bowdoin males to
marry them to women without a sense of humor, and then to take a
mutual delight in the consequences.

"You only married her to get a house," said the old man. (This was the
inexhaustible joke they shared against Mrs. Abby that in nearly twenty
years had never failed to rouse her serious indignation.) "I saw her
coming out of that abolitionist meeting yesterday."

"That's cousin Wendell Phillips got her into that," said Mr. James.
"Old Jamie was there, too."

"Old Jamie has got so much love to spare that it spills around," said
Mr. Bowdoin, "even on comfortable niggers just decently clothed.
That's not your wife's trouble." To which the son had no other
repartee than "James!" drawled in the solemn bass of amazed
indignation that his mother's voice assumed when goaded into speech by
his father's sallies. It was his boast that "Abby" never yet had
ventured to address him thus. And so this precious pair separated; the
father going home to his grandchildren, and the son to the club for
his afternoon rubber of whist. They still took life easy in the
forties.

Why was it that old Jamie, who should by rights have had his heart
broken, was happier than fortunate David? Both loved the same woman;
and no tenor hero ever loved so deeply as old Jamie, and he had lost
her. But he came of the humble millions that build the structure of
human happines